Chapter 3: Analyzing the Marketing Environment

Public Policy

Sets of laws and regulations that limit business for the good of society as a whole. Business legislation has been created to protect firms from each other, and to protect customers from unfair business practices, and to protect the interests of society against unrestrained business behavior. Marketers need to know these laws at the local, state, national, and international levels.

Suppliers (Microenvironment)

Suppliers provide the resources needed by the company to produce its goods and services. Most marketers treat their suppliers as partners in creating and delivering customer value and wish to achieve supplier satisfaction because supplier problems can seriously affect marketing (availability, costs, delays).

Generation X

The 45 million people born between 1965 and 1976 in the "birth dearth" following the baby boom.

Baby Boomers

The 78 million people born during the years following the World War II and lasting until 1964.

Millennials (Generation Y)

The 83 million children of the baby boomers, born between 1977 and 2000.

What two special aptitudes do marketers have?

They have disciplined methods - marketing research and marketing intelligence - for collecting information about the marketing environment, and they also spend more time in customer and competitor environments.

Media Publics

This group carries news, features, and editorial opinion. It includes newspapers, magazines, television stations, and blogs and other Internet media.

Local Publics

This group includes neighborhood residents and community organizations. Large companies usually create departments and programs that deal with local community issues and provide community support.

Internal Publics

This group includes workers, managers, volunteers, and the board of directors. Large companies use newsletters to inform and motivate their internal publics.

Financial Publics

This group influences the company's ability to obtain funds. Banks, investment analysts, and stockholders are the major financial publics.

Industrial Economies

Rich markets for many different kinds of goods.

Subsistence Economies

They consume most of their own agricultural and industrial output and offer few market opportunities.

General Public

A company needs to be concerned about the general public's attitude towards its products and activities. The public's image of the company affects its buying.

Citizen-Action Publics

A company's marketing decisions may be questioned by consumer organizations, environmental groups, minority groups, and others. Its public relations department can help it stay in touch with consumer and citizen groups.

Publics (Microenvironment)

Any group that has an actual or potential interest in or impact on an organization's ability to achieve its objectives.

Financial Intermediaries

Banks, credit companies, insurance companies, and other businesses that help finance transactions or insure against the risks associated with the buying and selling of goods.

Core Beliefs

Beliefs that have a high degree of persistence and are passed on from parents to children and are reinforced by schools, churches, business, and government.

Socially Responsible Behavior

Beyond just the legal, written expectations, "Doing the Right Thing".

Business Markets

Buy goods and services for further processing or use in their production processes.

Reseller Markets

Buy goods and services to resell at a profit.

International Markets

Buyers in other countries, including consumers, producers, resellers, and governments.

Shifts in Secondary Cultural Values

Cultural swings do take place. The major cultural values of a society are expressed in people's views of themselves and others, as well as in their views of organizations, society, nature, and the universe.

Customers (microenvironment)

Customers are the most important actors in the company's microenvironment. The aim of the entire value delivery network is to serve target customers and create strong relationships with them. There are five types of customer markets.

Environmental Sustainability

Developing strategies and practices that create a world economy that the planet can support indefinitely.

Resellers

Distribution channel firms that help the company find customers or make sales to them. These include wholesalers and retailers who buy and resell merchandise.

Economic Environment (Macroenvironment)

Economic factors that affect consumer purchasing power and spending patterns. Nations vary greatly in their levels and distribution of income.

Marketing Intermediaries (Microenvironment)

Firms that help the company to promote, sell, and distribute its goods to final buyers. They include resellers, physical distribution firms, marketing services agencies, and financial intermediaries.

Technological Environment (Macroenvironment)

Forces that create new technologies, creating new product and market opportunities. Perhaps the most dramatic force now shaping our destiny.

Government Markets

Government agencies that buy goods and services to produce public services or transfer the goods and services to others who need them.

Physical Distribution Firms

Help the company stock and move goods from their points of origin to their destinations.

Competitors (Microenvironment)

Marketers must gain strategic advantage by positioning their offerings strongly against competitors' offerings in the minds of consumers.

Consumer Markets

Individuals and households that buy goods and services for personal consumption.

Cultural Environment (Macroenvironment)

Institutions and other forces that affect society's basic values, perceptions, preferences, and behaviors.

Political and Social Environment (Macroenvironment)

Laws, government agencies, and pressure groups that influence and limit various organizations and individuals in a given society.

Government Publics

Management must take government developments into account. Marketers must often consult the company's lawyers on issues of product safety, truth in advertising, and other matters.

Responding to the Marketing Environment

Rather than simply watching and reacting, companies should take proactive steps with respect to the marketing environment.

The Company (Microenvironment)

Marketing management takes other company groups into account - groups such as top management, finance, R&D, purchasing, operations, and accounting. These interrelated groups form the internal environment, and marketing managers make decisions within the strategies and plans made by top management.

Marketing Services Agencies

Marketing research firms, advertising agencies, media firms, and marketing consulting firms that help the company target and promote its products to the right markets.

Natural Environment (Macroenvironment)

Natural resources that are needed as inputs by marketers or that are affected by marketing activities. Shortages of raw materials, increased pollution, and government interventions all affect the marketing activities.

Developing Economies

Outstanding marketing opportunities for the right kinds of products.

Marketing Environment

The actors and forces outside marketing that affect marketing management's ability to build and maintain successful relationships with target customers. Companies constantly watch and adapt to the changing environment.

Marketing Microenvironment

The actors close to the company that affect its ability to serve its customers - the company, suppliers, marketing intermediaries, customer markets, competitors, and publics. These combine to make up the company's value delivery network.

Marketing Macroenvironment

The larger societal forces that affect the microenvironment - demographic, economic, natural, technological, political, and cultural forces.

Cause-Related Marketing

To exercise their social responsibility and build more positive images, many companies are now linking themselves to worthwhile causes.

Secondary Beliefs

Values that are more open to change. Marketers have some chance at changing secondary values, not core values however.

Demographic Environment (Macroenvironment)

the study of human populations in terms of size, density, location, age, gender, race, occupation, and other statistics. Changes in demographics mean changes in markets.