Week 3 marketing Environment and Market research

Environmental Forces:

Market Environment: The actors and forces outside marketing that affect marketing management’s ability to build and maintain successful relationships with target customers.

Microenvironment consists of the actors close to the company that affect its ability to serve its customers—the company, suppliers, marketing intermediaries, customer markets, competitors, and publics.

Macroenvironment consists of the larger societal forces that affect the microenvironment—demographic, economic, natural, technological, political, and cultural forces. (PESTLE)

The economic environment: consists of factors that affect consumer purchasing power and spending patterns

Demographic and Economic Changes

Demographic and economic changes compel companies to adapt their marketing strategies to align with evolving consumer needs and market conditions, ensuring they remain competitive and relevant

1. Demographic Changes: Shifts in population characteristics, such as

  • age,

  • gender,

  • income level,

  • education

2. Economic Changes: The economic environment encompasses factors like

  • consumer purchasing power,

  • economic growth,

  • inflation,

  • employment rates

Recession: brands might shift their focus to value-oriented products to attract budget-conscious consumers.

Natural and Technological Trends

The Natural Environment: is the physical environment and the natural resources that are needed as inputs by marketers or that are affected by marketing activities.

Trends in the Natural Environment

  • Growing shortages of raw materials

  • Increased pollution

  • Increased government intervention

  • Developing strategies that support environmental sustainability

Technological Environment

  • Most dramatic force in changing the marketplace

  • New products, opportunities

  • Concern for the safety of new products

Political and Cultural Changes

Political and Social Environment

  • Legislation regulating business is intended to protect

  • companies from each other

  • consumers from unfair business practices

  • the interests of society against unrestrained business behavior

Cultural Environment: The cultural environment consists of institutions and other forces that affect a society’s basic values, perceptions, and behaviors. Cultural Environment

Persistence of Cultural Values

  • Core beliefs and values are persistent and are passed on from parents to children and are reinforced by schools, churches, businesses, and government.

  • Secondary beliefs and values are more open to change and include people’s views of themselves, others ,organizations, society, nature, and the universe


Company Reactions to Marketing Environment

Views on Responding

  • Uncontrollable: React and adapt to forces in the environment

  • Proactive: take aggressive actions to affect forces in the environment

  • Reactive: watch and react to forces in the environment

Managing Marketing Information


Marketing information system (MIS): refers to the people and procedures dedicated to assessing information needs, developing the needed information, and helping decision makers to use the information to generate and validate action able customer and market insights.

Marketing Information System MIS: provides information to the company’s marketing and other managers and external partners such as suppliers, resellers, and marketing service agencies.

Characteristics of a Good MIS

  • Balancing the information users would like to have against what they need and what is feasible to offer

How Marketers obtain Data

  • Internal Data: Internal databases are collections of consumer and market information obtained from data sources within the company network.

  • Marketing Intelligence: the systematic collection and analysis of publicly available information about consumers, competitors, and developments in the marketing environment.

Market Research:

A systematic process that involves the design, collection, analysis, and reporting of data pertinent to a specific marketing situation that an organization is facing.

Steps

  1. Defining the problem and research objectives

    Exploratory Research

    Descriptive Research

    Casual Research

  2. Developing the research plan for collecting information

    Outlines sources of existing data Spells out the specific research approaches, contact methods, sampling plans, and instruments together data

  3. Implementing the research plan collecting and analyzing the data

  4. Interpreting and reporting the findings

Secondary Data

Information that already exists somewhere, having been collected for another purpose.

Research Approaches

  • Observational research involves gathering primary data by observing relevant people, actions, and situations.

  • Ethnographic research involves sending trained observers to watch and interact with consumers in their “natural environments.

  • ”Survey research involves gathering primary data by asking people questions about their knowledge, attitudes, preferences, and buying behavior.

  • Experimental research involves gathering primary data by selecting matched groups of subjects, giving them different treatments, controlling related factors, and checking for differences in group responses

Primary Data: is information collected for the specific purpose at hand.

Sampling Plan

A sample is a segment of the population selected for marketing research to represent the population as a whole.

Types of Sampling

  • Simple random sample Every member of the population has a known and equal chance of selection.

  • Stratified random sample The population is divided into mutually exclusive groups and random samples are drawn from each group.

  • Cluster (area) sample The population is divided into mutually exclusive groups and the researcher draws a sample.

  • Nonprobability Sample

  • Convenience sample The researcher selects the easiest population members

  • .Judgment sample The researcher uses their judgment to select population members.

  • Quota sample The researcher finds and interviews a prescribed number of people in each of several categories

Analyzing and Using Marketing Information

Customer Relationship Management CRM: CRM involves managing detailed information about individual customers and carefully managing customer touch points to maximize customer loyalty