Meaning of Marketing Environment

Marketing environment is the totality of forces that affect the market decision and the attainment of marketing goal. It is a known fact that no firms are located in a vacuum. Itis thus obvious that they are surrounded by the variety of component that are interlinked.

Different scholars have given different views on marketing environment,

“A company marketing environment consists of the actors and forces that affect the company’s ability to develop and maintain successful transactions and relationship with its target custom”. By Philip Kotler

Features of Marketing Environment

Every marketing environment possesses certain distinct features explained as follows:

• External in nature
• Dynamic
• Create constraints and threats
• Relevant to the marketing decision making
• String source of opportunities

External in nature: Marketing environment includes those forces which are external in the nature and cannot be controlled or manipulated by the marketer when and whenever required.

Dynamic: Forces in marketing environment are dynamic in nature, they go on changing over time. For example, habit of people, their needs and wants, technology, politics, rules and regulation, etc.

Create constraints and threats: Marketing environment create constraints and threats to the management over time, without the consideration of which smooth functioning of management is not possible.

Relevant to the marketing decision making: Marketing environment is potentially relevant to the marketing decision making. A marketer needs to consider each and every component of marketing environment while making a rational decision. Without the consideration of marketing environment, marketing program can neither be formulated nor implemented successfully.

Strong source of opportunities: marketing environment provides both challenges and opportunities to the marketer. It is on the part of marketer to identify these business opportunities and maximize them.      

Importance of Understanding Marketing Environment

Proper understanding of marketing environment holds a greater importance in today’s competitive world. Marketing environment is important for sustainability and growth of the organization. The organization that sustains and succeed the most are the one that take into account the various aspects of marketing environment. In this reference, some of the major importance related to understanding marketing environment are as follows:

• Proper analysis of marketing environment helps in planning of various marketing related activities.
• It enables the business to compete more effectively and efficiently against its rivals.
• It helps in the identification of strength and weakness of the business.
• It also helps in identifying the opportunity and threats provided by ever changing marketing environment.
• Understanding marketing environment is a major catalyst in helping organization to take advantage of emerging strategic opportunities.

Scope of Marketing Environment

Scope of marketing environment refers to the extent of the area or subject matter that something deals with. Some scope of marketing environment are as follows:

1. Customer: The base of every marketing activities is a customer. In that sense, customer are the most important element of marketing.
2. Marketing organization: Business organizations, service providing organizations, pubic organizations, etc, that are involved in any marketing activities are referred as marketing organizations.
3. Internal and external elements: both the internal (companies, suppliers, intermediaries, etc.) and external (population, economic, natural, socio-culture, etc.) elements also come under scope of marketing environment.
4. Marketing mix element: Marketing mix elements like product, price, place, promotion, etc, are affected by marketing environment. This is the reason, they are also included in scope of marketing environment.