The Marketing Environment
Completion requirements
This chapter reviews the marketing environment and outlines the aspects of the changing environmental trends that marketers must address when preparing a strategic marketing plan. Note the emphasis on the consumer and the need to uncover buying patterns and trends that may be affected by outside environmental forces and changes.
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.