An enterprise’s marketing environment is a combination of various actors and forces that operate outside the organization and affect the ability of management and marketing services to establish successful interactions with potential customers.
Being highly variable, the marketing environment of the enterprise significantly affects the life of the enterprise, regardless of the field of activity. The changes that are taking place cannot be called smooth or predictable. They are able to give major surprises. Tell me, did representatives of oil companies, say, in the 70s expect the end of an era of cheap energy in such a fleeting prospect? How many management corporations were expecting the end of the baby boom and a change in retail rules? What car manufacturers have foreseen in the foreseeable future such an impact on consumer management decisions?
In this regard, enterprises should carefully monitor environmental changes, using for this both a complex of marketing research and all the possibilities of obtaining timely information.
The marketing environment of the enterprise is divided into internal and external components. The internal environment represents the factors that directly affect the results of the organization, its potential for customer service. Raw materials suppliers, marketing agencies, customers, contact audiences and competitors are an integral part of the marketing environment.
It’s not a secret to anyone that the goal of business is to make a profit. In this regard, the task of the marketing service is to ensure the production of those goods that will be attractive from the point of view of target customers. However, obtaining a stable profit also depends on the activities of other departments, on interaction with the internal environment of the enterprise. Each of the factors of the internal environment can significantly affect the enterprise. Let's consider some.
Suppliers are organizations that provide resources for the production of goods, as well as for the provision of services. They seriously affect marketing activities. For example, an increase in the price of raw materials will lead to higher prices for products, and their insufficient number will disrupt the marketing of products at the enterprise.
Competitors have a very important influence on the marketing activities of the organization. They force the company to monitor the actions of competitors and take timely marketing measures to maintain a competitive position in the market.
The external environment includes broader factors that affect the internal environment. These include factors of a natural, demographic, political, economic, technical and cultural nature.
For example, the demographic environment significantly affects all business processes of the enterprise. Demographic factors include:
- population growth;
- birth rate;
- age of the population;
- family composition;
- population migration ;
- level of education of the population;
- employment, etc.
It is obvious that in today's conditions, the well-being of an enterprise depends not only on the competitive opposition of marketing strategies that are used by different organizations, in particular, on the marketing policy of products at the enterprise. The success of the enterprise also depends on events that occur in the field of marketing. The marketing environment of the enterprise consists of a combination of uncontrolled factors, considering which, it is necessary to carry out a set of marketing activities.