The Marketing Environment

Marketing Environment- consists of the actors and forces outside marketing that affect marketing management's ability to develop and maintain successful relationships with its target customers. Includes:

Microenvironment - forces close to the company that affect its ability to serve its customers.

Macroenvironment - larger societal forces that affect the microenvironment.

The Company's microenvironment

Company's Internal Environment- functional areas inside a company that have an impact on the marketing department's plans.

Suppliers - provide the resources needed to produce goods and services and are an important link in the .value delivery system..

Marketing Intermediaries - help the company to promote, sell, and distribute its goods to final buyers. i.e. resellers.

Customers - four types of markets that purchase a company's goods and services.

1. Consumers
2. Businesses
3. Governments
4. Resellers

Note that any of these market types may be either domestic or international.

Competitors - those who serve a target market with similar products and services against whom a company must gain strategic advantage.

Publics - any group that perceives itself having an interest in a company's ability to achieve its objectives. These may be clearly defined or somewhat nebulous. The most important are:

• Financial (banks and stockmarkets)
• Media
• Government (foreign and domestic)
• Local (where production and offices are)
• National general public (where customers and other stakeholders are)
• Citizen Action and Lobbying publics Note that any of these publics may be either domestic or international.
  

The Company's Macroenvironment

Major Forces in the Company's Macroenvironment

Demographic | Economic | Natural | Technological | Political | Cultural

What are the Key Demographic Trends?

Changing Demographics

Demographic - populations changes

Age Distribution of the U.S. Population

Age Distribution Internationally

Economic . jobs, money, interest etc.

Natural . The physical universe

Technological . new science/engineering

Technological - forces that create new product and market opportunities.

• Communication
• Biological
• Electronic
• Data Processing

What other technologies will affect what we can sell and how we can sell it in the near and far future?

Faster pace of technological change; products are outdated at a rapid pace.

Almost unlimited opportunities being developed daily in health care, space industry, robotics, and bio-genetic field.

Challenge is not only technical, but also commercial . make practical, affordable versions of products.

Increased regulation concerning product safety, individual privacy, and other areas that affect technological changes.

Political -- laws, agencies and pressure groups that influence and limit organizations and individuals in a given society

Cultural -- beliefs and values - shared including:

• People's View of Themselves
• People's View of the Universe
• People's View of Others
• People's View of Nature
• People's View of Society
• People's View of Organizations (business, governments, other institutions)

Cultures are the systemic total of a society's basic values, perceptions, preferences, and behaviors.

Cultures differ drastically from one another

Cultures evolve -- usually slowly -- sometimes rapidly

What cultural changes are happening now ?

Natural Environment

What natural environmental changes are happening now ?

Political Environment

• Political -. Differs by local, city, state, country
• Subject to some influence by lobbies

Economic Environment

Responding to the Marketing Environment

Keep corporate and social goals in mind

Environmental Management Perspective

Taking a proactive approach to managing the microenvironment and the macroenvironment by taking aggressive (rather than passive) actions to affect the publics and forces in the marketing environment.

How? Hire lobbyists , run .advertorials., press law suits, file complaints, and form agreements.

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