No business exists and works in a vacuum, but as part and parcel of the environment in which it finds itself. An efficient and effective marketing strategy is a function of the marketing manager’s ability to comprehend the environment in which the business operates.
The marketing environment is made up of a set of factors or forces which function or affect a corporation’s performance in its target market.
Jain (1981:69) described the marketing environment to incorporate those components which may influence the business directly or indirectly in any perceptible way. Marketing environment factors impact the organization by the means of input and the associations also influence the environment by output. The association between the company and the marketing environment is frequently called “inseparable” the business and its environment are always in a state of “give and take” or homeostasis.
The marketing environment is composed of these forces or component that impacts the corporation’s capability to function effectively in its chosen target market.
The marketing environment is divided into two important components. The elements are,
Internal environment: the inner environment is concerned with the controllable factors. Controllable factors are categorized into two classes, they’re; the strategy factors and unmarketable variables. External environment: the outside environment is concerned with the uncontrollable factors. These factors are called uncontrollable since the marketing manager can’t directly control any of those components. The marketing manager is left with the choice of adapting to the environment by prompt observation, analysis, and forecasting of those environmental variables. The outside environment can further be split into two components, the macro environment, and the microenvironment.
Microenvironment:
The components that fall under the micro environment include forces or factors in the firm’s immediate environment which impact the firm’s capacity to perform effectively in the market place. These forces are providers, distributors, customers, and competitors. Let us discuss all those variables in detail.
Suppliers:
Providers are business customers who supply goods and services to other business organizations for resale or for productions of different goods. The behaviour of certain forces at the providers can influence the functioning of the purchasing organization favorably or negatively. The vital factors here are the number of providers and the quantity of suppliers to the industry. An audit of these suppliers will let us to value their own power and bargaining power, which the suppliers hold within the sector as a whole. The replies to the issues concerned have the potentials to impact the capability of companies in the industry to efficiently deliver need-satisfying goods and/ or services. The trend now is that buyers try to convince the supplier to supply precisely what the companies want. This practice is called “reverse marketing”.
Customers:
Customers are people who purchase goods and/ or services created by the business. In a buying chain, different folks play substantial roles before a purchase decision is made. Many influences have to be understood. The customer might be the customer of the goods where he/she is the consumer. The crucial factor here is that the wants and needs of consumers aren’t static. They are quickly changing. The changes in the tastes of the user create opportunities and threats in the industry. The changes called for the marshaling of different strategies to fit into windows of opportunities or endure the threats in the industry. A fantastic understanding of customers’ behaviour will facilitate the design and production of products and services that the clients need and want, rather than what they have the ability to produce.
Competitor:
A competitor is a company operating in the same sector or marketplace with a different firm. The thought here is that Company A produces a substitute for that of company B (industrial strategy ) or firm A and firm B seeks to meet the exact same customer need (market strategy).