Marketing-Business Environment

•A company’s marketing environment consists of the actors and forces outside marketing that affect marketing management’s ability to develop and maintain successful transactions with its target customers. 

•The marketing environment offers both opportunities and threats. 

Microenvironment

       These are factors that the company can control to a certain extent.  

•        Competitors -both direct and indirect.  It is essential to do a SWOT analysis on competitors that pose the biggest threat to the company
•        Customers-who are our target market?  Where are they located? Are they loyal customers? How often do they purchase etc
•        Company departments-every department in the organisation should be aware of the products and services offered by the company, price points, and promotional offers.
•        Marketing intermediaries-these can be retailers, wholesalers, agents etc.  Marketing intermediaries can give very important information to companies as in some cases they have a very close relationship with their customers.
•        Publics-these are groups that have an interest in your company.  Publics can include: past, present and future customers, financial institutions, potential investors, community groups etc

Macro Environment

      These are five major forces of the Marco Environment referred to as STEEP or PEEST.  These factors are outside the control of the organisation, therefore the organisation needs to be flexible enough to react to changes in the Marco Environment

Forces of the Marco Environment

•      Political/Legal-since we are part of the EU much of our laws originate from the EU.  Companies need to pay attention to company, competitor and consumer legislation. 
•      Economic-elements such as interest rates, customers available discretionary income,  currency exchange rates, the state of the Euro currency are some of the factors that may affect the operation of a company.  The level of exports out of the country-who are our trading partners-how dependent are we on them?
•       Environment-this is the natural environment.  We are all aware of the shortage in raw material (oil and coal)  the increased cost of energy (the cost of Gas and electricity has increased in recent times) and lastly the issue of increased pollution.
•       Social-within the social environment there are two important elements.  These are: cultural and demographic factors.  Demographic factors-change in the age of the population, population growth and trends, changing age structure of the population, the changing family and the rising number of education people.  Cultural factors-companies need to take into consideration are the awareness of cultural norms and language. 
•       Technological-the fast pace of technological change may have a profound impact on our company.  Are we trend setters or followers? How much do we need to invest in R&D to develop new technological products and services for our customers? 
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