What is the external environment? What parameters are included in it, and what influence do they have on the choice of a marketing plan?
What is the external environment? This is all that can affect the company and its activities, but does not apply to the company itself. In other words, new laws that are being adopted in the country, an increase in the number of children in relation to adults, climate change and the development of e-commerce - all this is called the external environment.
Why do you need an analysis of the external environment in marketing? First of all, this is done so that the company and the product it produces are successful in the market. In order to successfully sell, you need not only to imagine who will buy a product, but also to understand in what conditions people will buy it.
If we look at why a company or any of the products it offers is failing, among the main reasons for this are conditions such as poor time to market, or lack of market demand for this product. For example, you make children's skis and offer them to parents of schoolchildren - for physical education lessons. But the climate has changed, the winters have been warm for several years, there is no snow, and skis are not needed for lessons.
Thus, in order to be able to successfully plan their actions, the marketer must analyze three large segments:
- Macroenvironments to establish what is happening in the country and in the region and understand what will happen in the future.
- Consumer behavior - to understand what they need, what their needs are not met, what they need, and also to identify possible new and unclosed niches.
- Market - what is now, what may appear in the future, what is the structure of the market.
It is also important to analyze competitors: who the competitor is and what they offer.
To analyze the macroenvironment, the so-called PEST analysis is used. The first letters of the abbreviation indicate, respectively:
- Political parameters - what is happening in the country and the world, and where this can lead us.
- Economic parameters - how stable the economic situation is, what can affect it. The possible demand for the product depends on this, as well as how the company will position its product. In a crisis, more economical goods are good, in an era of economic prosperity, others.
- Social parameters - how society lives, who is part of it, what is its structure. It is also useful to understand what is in fashion now and what may become fashionable in the near future.
- Technological parameters are new technologies that can help us to be more efficient, or can lead to the fact that our product becomes unnecessary.
The above set is minimal, sometimes a few more parameters are added to it. This analysis is called STEEPLE. Additional parameters have been added to it:
- Environment - the environment and everything connected with it. Including how the created product affects the environment.
- Education - everything related to education and human resources in relation to this product.
- Legal - changes in legislation, as well as everything related to legislation. So, some new laws may affect the possibility of using the product, and the lack of the ability to protect their copyrights will significantly reduce profits.
This kind of analysis allows marketers to get a lot of useful information to draw up a marketing plan.
