Are the forces close to a company that affect its ability to serve its customers the company market channel firms customer markets competitors and the public?

The marketing environment of a company is composed of the people, institutions, and forces outside marketing that influencer marketing management’s ability to develop and maintain a successful relationship with its target customers.

Constantly watching and adapting to the changing marketing environment is important because the marketing environment offers both opportunities and threats.

For example, an alliance with the supplier and distributor may help an organization to get a competitive edge over its rivals.

On the other hand entry of many competitors poses a threat to the organization as some of their customers may shift to a new seller.

By conducting a regular and systematic environmental analysis, the company can revise and adapt marketing strategies to cope with the new challenges and opportunities in the marketplace.

The marketing environment is the combination of the microenvironment and macro environment.

According to Philip Kotler, “A company’s marketing environment consists of the internal factors & forces, which affect the company’s ability to develop & maintain successful transactions & relationships with the company’s target customers”.

According to Pride &Ferrell, “The marketing environment consists of external forces that directly or indirectly influence an organization’s acquisition of inputs and generation of outputs”.

To sum up, the marketing environment is a set of diverse, dynamic and uncontrollable forces that impinge on an organization’s marketing operations and opportunities.

Let’s look at this chart that shows the micro (internal) and macro (external) elements of the marketing environment.

Macro Environment of Marketing

Macro environment factors which consist of external forces. These external factors influence the company’s marketing strategy is a great length.

The external environment factors are uncontrollable and the company finds it hard to tackle the external factors.

Elements of macro-environment of marketing are;

1. Demographic factors.
2. Economic factors.
3. Natural forces.
4. Technology factors.
5. Political factors.
6. Cultural factors.

In the following ways, they affect business strategy.

Demographic Environment

Demography is the study of human populations in terms of size, destiny, location, age, gender, race, occupation, and other statistics.

This is the very important factors that help the marketer to divide the population into different market segments and target markets.

Demographic data also helps in preparing geographical marketing plans, age, and sex-wise plans.

Economic Environment

Economic Environment is those macro factors that affect consumer buying power and spending patterns.

It includes the level of income, policies, and nature of an economy, economic resources, trade cycles, distribution of income and wealth.

When the income of a family or country (per capote income) changes it also changes the buying behavior and spending pattern of the family or country.

Natural Environment

Natural environment involves the natural resources that are needed as inputs by marketers or they are affected by marketing activities.

So marketers should be aware of several trends in the natural environment.

Technological Environment

Technological forces are perhaps the most dramatic forces which are changing rapidly. These macro-environmental forces create a new product, new markets and marketing opportunities for marketers.

Political Environment

It includes government actions, government legislation, public policies, and acts which affect the operations of a company or business.

These forces may affect an organization on a local, regional, national or international level.

So marketers and business management pay close attention to the political forces to judge how government actions which will affect their company.

Cultural Environment

Cultural factors in heritage, living styles, religion, etc. also affect a company’s marketing strategy. Social responsibility also becomes part of marketing and slowly emerged in marketing literature.

Socially responsible marketing is that business firms should take the lead in eliminating socially harmful products.

Micro Marketing environment

The micro-environment refers to the forces that are close to the company and affect its ability to serve its customers. It influences the organization directly.

It includes the company itself, its suppliers, marketing intermediaries, customer markets, competitors, and the public.

5 components of the micro environment of marketing are;

1. Internal Organizational Environment.
2. Marketing Channel.
3. Types of Market.
4. Competition.
5. Organizational Objectives.

Internal Organizational Environment

The first is the organization’s internal environment—its several departments and management levels as it affects marketing management’s decision making.

Marketing Channel

The second component includes the marketing channel firms that cooperate to create value: the suppliers and marketing intermediaries (middlemen, physical distribution firms, marketing-service agencies, financial intermediaries).

Types of Market

The third component consists of the five types of markets in which the organization can sell: the consumer, producer, reseller, government, and international markets.

Competition

The fourth component consists of the competitors facing the organization.

Organizational Objectives

The fifth component consists of all the public’s that have an actual or potential interest in or impact on the organization’s ability to achieve its objectives: financial, media, government, citizen action, and local, general, and internal publics.

Differences between Macro and Micro Environment of Marketing

Micro and macro refer to economic environments within which marketing takes place.

Though not exactly opposites, broad differences exist between macro marketing and micromarketing.

The differences between macro environments and micro-environments may be relevant to identify in the following table:

How environmental factors affecting the consumer decision process?

Economic factors

Economic factors play an important role in consumer buying behavior decisions. It also directly affects the purchasing power of consumers.

If consumers’ purchasing power is weak, they cannot decide to buy goods or services even if they like very much.

But, if they have purchasing power, they can take a prompt decision to buy goods or services they like.

Income level, the income of their family members, liquid asset, spending attitude, credit facility, etc. are the economic factors to determine consumers’ buying decision.

Technological factors

Technological forces are perhaps the most dramatic forces which are changing customer habit by introducing a new product for the customer.

Cultural factors

Culture is crucial when it comes to understanding the needs and behaviors of an individual. Throughout his existence, an individual will be influenced by his family, his

friends, his cultural environment or society that will “teach” him values, preferences as well as common behaviors to their own culture and buying behavior.

Demographic factors

Demography is the study of human populations in terms of size, destiny, location, age, gender, race, occupation, and other statistics. This is very important because these factors directly influence consumer decision making.

Is the forces close to the company that affect its ability to serve its customers?

What are the Macroenvironmental forces that affect the company's ability to serve its customers?

Which of the following terms best describes the environment that includes the forces close to the company?

Are the factors and forces outside marketing that affect marketing management's ability to develop and maintain successful transactions with its target customers?