The Level of Importance of the Four P’s by the Customers of Shell, Petron, and Chevron Stations in General Santos City

Abstract

Consumer-centric companies focus their resources on developing products and establishing strategies that satisfy customers’ needs and wants. The efforts involved in determining customers’ desires require rigorous analysis because of customers’ heterogeneity. Cost leadership, one of the three generic competitive strategies, aims to increase profit by reducing the cost of production and offering a competitively priced product. This strategy is effective in maximizing the limited resources of the company. In relation to the three generic competitive strategies, there are factors that affect customers’ decisions. The factors that affect customers’ preferences are location, brand, behavior, values, product attributes, quality, price, promotion, and perception. This study focused on the four significant factors, which are the Four Ps: product, price, place, and promotion. Respondents, who are customers of Shell, Petron, and Chevron fuel stations in General Santos City, evaluated the level of importance of the Four Ps. A sample size of 120 respondents was chosen to answer the validated questionnaires. A descriptive-quantitative research design and stratified sampling methods were applied in the study. Microsoft Excel and IBM SPSS were the software used to analyze and interpret the data. The findings indicate that the place factor and the promotion factor, among the four factors, have the highest and lowest means, respectively. According to the respondents, price information and brand are very important, since they have the highest mean in price and product factors. The analysis of the Kruskal-Wallis H Test indicates that there are no significant differences in the level of importance of the four Ps among Shell, Petron, and Chevron stations in General Santos City as evaluated by the respondents.