Analyzing the Marketing Environment

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the Microenvironment, Macroenvironment, and key marketing legislation from Chapter 02 of Marketing: An Introduction.

Marketing Environment

Outside forces that affect marketing management’s ability to build and maintain successful relationships with target customers.

Microenvironment

Actors close to the company that affect its ability to serve its customers.

Macroenvironment

Larger societal forces that affect the microenvironment, including demographic, economic, natural, technological, political, and cultural forces.

The Company (Internal Environment)

Interrelated groups including departments that share the responsibility for understanding customer needs and creating customer value.

Suppliers

External actors that provide the resources needed by the company to produce its goods and services.

Marketing Intermediaries

Firms that help the company to promote, sell, and distribute its products to final buyers, including resellers, physical distribution firms, marketing services agencies, and financial intermediaries.

Publics

Any group that has an actual or potential interest in or impact on an organization’s ability to achieve its objectives, such as financial, media, government, and citizen-action groups.

Consumer Markets

One of the five types of customer markets; individuals and households that buy goods and services for personal consumption.

Demography

The study of human populations in terms of size, density, location, age, gender, race, occupation, and other statistics.

Economic Environment

Economic factors that affect consumer purchasing power and spending, including changes in consumer spending and income distribution.

Natural Environment

The physical environment and natural resources needed as inputs by marketers or affected by marketing activities.

Environmental Sustainability

Concerns regarding the physical environment that have grown steadily over the past three decades, leading to trends like green movements.

Technological Environment

Forces that create new technologies, creating new markets and opportunities, including the Internet of Things (IoT) and RFID.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID)

A technology in the technological environment used to track products.

Political Environment

Laws, government agencies, and pressure groups that influence or limit various organizations and individuals in a society.

Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (1990)

U.S. legislation requiring that food product labels provide detailed nutritional information.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) (2000)

U.S. law prohibiting online collection of information from children without parental consent and allowing parents to review that information.

CAN-SPAM Act (2003)

U.S. legislation that regulates the distribution and content of unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act (2020)

U.S. law designed to increase cybersecurity for devices that connect the internet to physical devices.

Cause-Related Marketing

A form of corporate giving where companies link themselves to worthwhile causes to exercise social responsibility and build positive images.

Cultural Environment

Institutions and other forces that affect a society’s basic values, perceptions, and behaviors.

Core Beliefs

Values and beliefs that have a high degree of persistence and are often passed from parents to children.

Secondary Beliefs

Cultural values and beliefs that are more open to change, such as people’s views of themselves, others, or society.

Reactive Firms

Companies that passively accept the marketing environment and do not try to change it.

Proactive Firms

Companies that develop strategies to change the environment by taking aggressive actions to affect the publics and forces in their market.