Chapter Three
The Marketing Environment
Marketing Environment
 Consists of actors and forces outside the
organization that affect management’s 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.
3-2
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.
3-3
Marketing Environment
 Actors in the microenvironment
include:
– The company itself
– Suppliers
– Marketing intermediaries
– Customers
– Competitors
– Publics
3-4
The Microenvironment
 Company’s Internal Environment:
– Areas inside a company.
– Affects the marketing department’s
planning strategies.
– All departments must “think
consumer” and work together to
provide superior customer value and
satisfaction.
3-5
The Microenvironment
 Suppliers:
– Provide resources needed to produce
goods and services.
– Important link in the “value delivery
system.”
– Most marketers treat suppliers like
partners.
3-6
The Microenvironment
 Marketing intermediaries:
– Help the company to promote, sell, and
distribute its goods to final buyers
• Resellers
• Physical distribution firms
• Marketing services agencies
• Financial intermediaries
3-7
The Microenvironment
 Customers:
– Five types of markets that purchase a
company’s goods and services.
• Consumer
• Business
• Reseller
• Government
• International
3-8
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.
3-9
The Microenvironment
 Publics:
– Any group that has an interest in or impact
on an organization's ability to achieve its
objectives.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Financial public
Media public
Government public
Citizen-action public
Local public
General public
Internal public
3-10
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.
3-11
The Macroenvironment
 Forces in the macroevironment can be
categorized as:
– Demographic
– Economic
– Natural
– Technological
– Political
– Cultural
3-12
Demographic Environment
 Demographics:
The study of human populations in
terms of size, density, location, age,
gender, race, occupation, and other
statistics.
– Marketers track changing age and family
structures, geographic population shifts,
educational characteristics, and
population diversity.
3-13
Demographic Environment
 The changing age structure of the
population is the single most important
demographic trend.
3-14
Demographic Environment
 Changing American family and
household makeup:
– Married couples with children = 34%, and
falling.
– Married couples and people living with
other relatives = 22%.
– Single parents = 12%.
– Single persons and adult “live-togethers”
(also called nonfamily households) = 32%
3-15
Demographic Environment
 Geographic Shifts in Population:
– 14% of U.S. residents move each year.
– General shift toward the Sunbelt states.
– City to suburb migration continues.
– More people moving to “micropolitan”
areas.
– More people telecommute.
• 1 in 5 people now work out of their
home.
3-16
Demographic Environment
 Better Educated Population:
– 1980:
• 69% of people over age 25 completed
high school.
• 17% had completed college.
– 2003:
• 85% of people over age 25 completed
high school.
• 27% had completed college.
3-17
Demographic Environment
 Increasing diversity:
– U.S. is a “salad bowl” mixing together
various groups, each of which retains its
ethnic and cultural differences.
• Ethnic segments are growing as a
percentage of the U.S. population and
growth is projected to continue.
3-18
Economic Environment
 Consists of factors that affect consumer
purchasing power and spending patterns.
 Changes in Income
 Income Distribution
–
–
–
–
Upper class
Middle class
Working class
Underclass
3-19
Natural Environment
 Involves natural resources that are
needed as inputs by marketers or that
are affected by marketing activities.
 Factors include:
– Shortages of raw materials.
– Increased pollution.
– Increased government intervention.
– Environmentally sustainable strategies.
3-20
Technological Environment




Most dramatic force shaping our destiny.
Changes rapidly.
Creates new markets and opportunities.
Challenge is to make practical, affordable
products.
 Safety regulations result in higher research
costs and longer time between
conceptualization and introduction of
product.
3-21
Political Environment
 Includes laws, government agencies, and
pressure groups that influence or limit
various organizations and individuals in a
given society.
 Areas of concern:
– Increasing legislation.
– Changing government agency enforcement.
– Increased emphasis on ethics and socially
responsible behavior.
3-22
Cultural Environment
 The institutions and other forces that affect
a society’s basic values, perceptions,
preference, and behaviors.
– Core beliefs and values are passed on from
parents to children and are reinforced by
schools, churches/mosques, business, and
government.
– Secondary beliefs and values are more open to
change.
• Marketers may be able to change secondary
beliefs, but NOT core beliefs.
3-23
Cultural Environment
 Society’s major cultural views are
expressed in people’s views of:
– Themselves
– Others
– Organizations
– Society
– Nature
– The universe
3-24
Responding to the
Marketing Environment
 Environmental Management
Perspective
– Taking a proactive approach to managing
the environment by taking aggressive
(rather than reactive) actions to affect the
publics and forces in the marketing
environment.
3-25