Transcript marketing environment

Marketing II
Chapter 3: Analyzing the Marketing Environment
Marketing Environment
• Companies must constantly watch and manage the marketing
environment to seek opportunities and ward off threats.
• The marketing environment consists of: all the actors and forces
influencing the company’s ability to transact business effectively with
its target market.
Environmental Forces - that affect the
company’s ability to serve customers
• The company’s microenvironment consists of actors close to the
company that combine to form its value delivery network or that
affect its ability to serve its customers.
• It includes the company’s internal environment—its several
departments and management levels—as it influences marketing
decision making.
Marketing Channel Firms
• Suppliers, marketing intermediaries, physical distribution firms,
marketing services agencies, and financial intermediaries.
• Cooperate to create customer value.
Competitors
• Vie with the company in an effort to serve customers better.
• Various publics have an actual or potential interest in or impact on
the company’s ability to meet its objectives.
Five types of customer markets exist:
• Consumer
• Business
• Reseller
• Government
• International markets
Microenvironment
• Consists of larger societal forces that affect the entire
microenvironment.
• The six forces making up the company’s microenvironment:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Demographic
Economic
Natural
Technological
Political/social
Cultural forces
• These forces shape opportunities and pose threats to the company.
Demographic Environments
• Demography is the study of the characteristics of human populations.
• Today’s demographic environment shows:
•
•
•
•
•
a changing age structure
shifting family profiles
geographic population shifts
a better-educated and more white-collar population
increasing diversity
Baby Boomers
• The 78 million people born during the years following World War II and
lasting until 1964.
• Born between 1946 – 1964
• Over the years baby boomers have been one of the most powerful forces
shaping the marketing environment.
• Youngest in their mid-forties; oldest in their sixties and entering
retirement.
• Maturing boomers are rethinking the purpose and value of their work,
responsibilities and relationships.
• Great Recession hit baby boomers hard and now spend more carefully and
plan to work longer.
Generation X
• The 49 million people born between 1965 – 1976 in the “birth
dearth” following the baby boom.
• Considerably smaller than the boomer generation.
• Seek Success, they are less materialistic than the other groups.
• They prize experience, not acquisition.
• Family comes first, career second.
• More skeptical.
• They tend to research products before they consider a purchase
• Prefer quality to quantity.
• Tend to be less receptive to overt marketing pitches.
Millennials (Generation Y)
• The 83 million children of the baby boomers
born between 1977 -2000.
• Echo boomers.
• Most financially strapped generation.
• Facing higher unemployment and saddled with more debt.
• Near-empty piggy banks.
• Make up a huge and attractive market, both now and in the future.
• Utter fluency and comfort with digital technology – it’s a way of life.
• Seek out information and engage in two-way brand conversations.
Economic Environments
• The economic environment consists of factors that affect buying
power and patterns.
• The economic environment is characterized by more frugal
consumers who are seeking greater value—the right combination of
good quality and service at a fair price.
• The distribution of income also is shifting.
• The rich have grown richer, the middle class has shrunk, and the poor
have remained poor, leading to a two-tiered market.
Major Trends
• The natural environment shows three major trends:
• Shortages of certain raw materials
• Higher pollution levels
• More government intervention in natural resources management
• Environmental concerns create marketing opportunities for alert
companies.
What is Environmental Sustainability?
Technological Environments
• The technological environment creates both opportunities and
challenges.
• Companies that fail to keep up with technological change will miss
out on new product and marketing opportunities.
Key changes in the Political Environments
• The political environment consists of laws, agencies, and groups that
influence or limit marketing actions.
• The political environment has undergone changes that affect
marketing worldwide:
• Increasing legislation regulating business
• Strong government agency enforcement
• Greater emphasis on ethics and socially responsible actions
Key Changes in the Cultural Environments
• The cultural environment consists of institutions and forces that affect
a society’s values, perceptions, preferences, and behaviors.
• The environment shows trends toward:
•
•
•
•
•
•
mass mingling
a lessening trust of institutions
increasing patriotism
greater appreciation for nature
a changing spiritualism
the search for more meaningful and enduring values.
How Companies Can React
• Companies can passively accept the marketing environment as an
uncontrollable element to which they must adapt, avoiding threats
and taking advantage of opportunities as they arise.
• Or they can take a proactive stance, working to change the
environment rather than simply reacting to it.
• Whenever possible, companies should try to be proactive rather than
reactive.