Today in the world there are a large number of techniques that can properly plan the marketing strategy of an enterprise, both when entering new sales markets and expanding its production. One of the most important components of any marketing research of the market is the STEP analysis, due to which information is collected on the main environmental factors that directly affect the population, its preferences and the possibility of doing business.
A STEP analysis of the enterprise is extremely necessary for him, since without taking into account the external environment, talking about the objectivity of researching the market of goods and services is simply pointless. That is why, many years ago, leading Western marketers identified this analysis as the most important factor in taking into account the general direction of enterprise development. The name of this analysis comes from the English abbreviation STEP, or rather from the first capital letters, which mean the following environmental factors :
- Social Socially significant factors;
- Technological Technologically significant factors;
- Economical economically significant factors;
- Political Politically significant factors.
It is important to understand that STEP analysis not only allows you to take into account external factors, but also distinguishes them into the category of such areas that the company cannot influence. They should be taken into account and used for their own purposes. An example is the situation in which McDonalds was at the time of opening its first representative office in Moscow. Then the vast majority of people, although they heard about this network of eateries around the world, however, have never seen anything like it. That is why there was great excitement on the first day of the opening, and for the first time in its history a huge queue arose at McDonalds. This situation clearly characterizes that the company did not fully take into account the factors of the social and political aspects, since in the post-Soviet space the opening of the first American eatery looked like a real holiday. On the whole, such a boom went only to the benefit of the company, however, made marketers take a more responsible approach to further planning their strategy in order to avoid long lines.
STEP analysis allows you to use a number of advantages due to which the company can successfully compete and conduct trade and economic activities. So, these are the benefits:
- when working with STEP – factors, both the manager and his subordinates begin not only to talk about the external environment, but also gradually begin to think about it;
- the collective is fostered a culture of taking into account various factors of the external environment, as a result of which its own vision of the external environment and macro factors appears;
- as a result of studying external factors, the marketer-analyst builds a picture of their holistic perception;
- in the process of thinking about the external environment for a long period of time, employees of the company develop a stable habit of paying much more attention to external factors than to internal moments.
Conducting STEP analysis is quite simple, however, the main thing in this matter is the development of the correct approach to the general analysis of the external environment. With a systematic approach, the employees of the marketing department develop a common vision for the prospects of the enterprise and evaluate its performance in terms of achieving possible results. STEP-analysis on the example of the enterprise allows you to identify strong and weak impact factors, using which you can plan tactical and strategic actions for the near and long term development of the company. This explains the great popularity of STEP analysis in modern companies.