The Marketing Environment

Key Takeaways

• A number of forces over which it has little or no control affect a company's marketing activities.
• Taken together, they make up its external marketing environment, which includes regulatory and political activity, economic conditions, competitive forces, changes in technology, and social and cultural influences.
• Successful marketing often hinges on understanding consumer behavior - the decision process that individuals go through when purchasing or using products.
• Several psychological and social variables influence buyers' decisions. They go through a series of steps in reaching the decision to buy a product: need recognition, information search, evaluation, purchase, and postpurchase evaluation.