BA320

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Marketing Environment

• BA320
• Summer 2006

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Agenda for Today

• Describe the environmental forces that affect the
  companys ability to serve its customers.
• Explain how changes in the demographic and
  economic environments affect marketing decisions.
• Discuss how companies can react to the marketing
  environment.

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Marketing Environment

• Consists of actors and forces outside the
  organization that affect managements ability to
  build and maintain relationships with target
  customers.
• Studying the environment allows marketers to take
  advantage of opportunities as well as to combat
  threats.
• Marketing intelligence and research are used to
  collect information about the environment.

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Marketing Environment

• Includes
• Microenvironment actors close to the company
  that affect its ability to serve its customers.
• Macroenvironment larger societal forces that
  affect the microenvironment.
• Considered to be beyond the control of the
  organization.

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Figure 3-1Actors in the Microenvironment
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The Microenvironment

• Companys Internal Environment
• All departments must think consumer.
• Suppliers
• Important link in the value delivery system.
• Marketing intermediaries
• Help the company to promote, sell, and distribute
  its goods to final buyers

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Partnering with Intermediaries
Marketing in Action

• Coca-Colas partnership efforts help
  intermediaries to market more effectively.
• Coca-Cola shares research results related to the
  beverage market, such as consumer preference and
  demographic data. Theyve even analyzed creative
  aspects of drive-through menu board design that
  could be improved.

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The Microenvironment

• Customers
• Types of markets that purchase a companys goods
  and services (segments)
• Publics
• Any group that has an interest in or impact on an
  organization's ability to achieve its objectives.
  

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The Microenvironment

• Competitors
• Those who serve a target market with products and
  services that are viewed by consumers as being
  reasonable substitutes.
• Company must gain strategic advantage against
  these organizations.

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Marketing in Action
Promoting Strategic Advantages
Comparative advertising is often used to promote
a companys or brands strategic
advantage. Comparative advertising may name or
show a specific competitor, or refer to the
competition indirectly via comparisons to other
brands or the leading brand.
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The Macroenvironment

• The company and all of the other actors operate
  in a larger macroenvironment of forces that shape
  opportunities and pose threats to the company.

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Figure 3-2Forces in the Macroenvironment
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Demographic Environment

• Demographics The study of human populations in
  terms of size, density, location, age, gender,
  race, occupation, and other statistics.
• The changing age structure of the U.S. population
  is the single most important demographic trend.
• Baby boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y are
  the key groups.

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Demographic Environment

• Changing American family and household makeup
• Married couples with children 34, and falling.
• Increasing diversity
• U.S. is a salad bowl mixing together various
  groups, each of which retains its ethnic and
  cultural differences.

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Macroenvironment (cont.)

• Economic Environment
• Factors that affect consumer purchasing power
  and spending patterns.
• Natural Environment
• Natural resources that are needed as inputs or
  that are affected by marketing activities.
• Technological Environment
• Creates new markets and opportunities.
• Political Environment
• Laws, government agencies, and pressure groups
  that limit organizations.

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Cultural Environment

• The institutions and other forces that affect a
  societys basic values, perceptions, preference,
  and behaviors.
• Core beliefs and values are passed on from
  parents to children and are reinforced by
  schools, churches, business, and government.
• Secondary beliefs and values are more open to
  change.
• Marketers may be able to change secondary
  beliefs, but NOT core beliefs.

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AMEX VIDEO
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Rest Stop Reviewing the Concepts

• Describe the environmental forces that affect the
  companys ability to serve its customers.
• Explain how changes in the demographic and
  economic environments affect marketing decisions.
• Discuss how companies can react to the marketing
  environment.