What do you understand by the term marketing environment? Describe how a company may control and/or adapt to its marketing environment so as to develop an efficient strategy. Give suitable examples.

No organisation operates in a vacuum. All businesses are surrounded by laws, pressure groups, customers and competitors. These are part of the marketing environment that the organisation works within. Dealing with this environment is a major part of the marketer's work since marketing is an interface between the organisation and the outside world, meaning that the marketing policy of any firm should be viewed as operating within a rapidly changing environment. If a company is to meet it's goals, these external factors must be monitored and responded to.

All companies, no matter where they are situated, are affected by circumstances beyond their control. These include factors such as climate, technology, interest rates and suppliers. This is what is known as the marketing environment which consists of the internal and external environment. The internal environment is concerned with those marketing factors which occur within the organisation, while the external environment is concerned with everything that happens outside the organisation.

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The external environment can then be broken down into the micro and macro environment. The micro environment consists of those factors close to the organisation and the macro consists of those common to society as a whole. A useful way of looking at the external environment is through the PEST analysis, which goes about analysing the socio-cultural, technological, economical and political environment. These factors all affect the company itself, to avoid any problems and possibly increase profit, a company needs to be proactive in order to keep up with these environmental changes. When a company is proactive, managers look for ways to change the organisation's environment in the belief that many environmental factors can be controlled or influenced in some way. A company may be proactive in its socio-cultural environment by analysing the direction in which society is headed and so...