Various activities associated with the 4 Ps are increasingly shared with other functions in the firm or have migrated to other functions altogether. After a product launch, software engineers at Intuit routinely listen in to customer questions on the company's help line to gain first- hand insight into problems and issues raised by product users. Pricing also has become, increasingly, the domain of financial planning and operations. Operations personnel, often without consultation with the marketing function, handle sophisticated yield management pricing systems and pricing by market conditions in real-time. One of the most successful of these pricing approaches is the yield management systems employed by firms in the airline industry.
Promotion remains the domain of marketing, but it has become increasingly tactical.
Strategic marketing activities, such as building brands, are often the function of strategic planners and general managers. Intel's brand building activities have been driven from the very top of the organization. Distribution has become highly specialized and is often a part of what is now called supply-chain management. Supply-chain management is as much the domain of information systems specialists using software provided by firms like SAP, PeopleSoft and CrossWorlds as it is the domain of marketing and logistics specialists. This migration of marketing activities to other functions in the firm varies by firm and industry, but its occurrence is real and unmistakable.