Influence of Marketing Environment on Marketing Decisions

We have discussed marketers have to take several and important decisions to be able to bring right-product for the right people at the right price at the right time with right services .All this is happening in an environment. In other words, marketers’ decisions can be good and profitable only if they are in consonance with the environment. Marketers must understand the environment.

MARKETING ENVIRONMENT
Environment is a broad spectrum or sets of conditioned which prevail at a given time. For
environmentalists, it is air, oxygen, dust, smoke etc .in atmosphere. But in marketing, we mean two things.We have studied it previously.

• The task environment
• The broad environment

Task environment involves immediate actors, such as suppliers, distributors, dealers and consumers etc,involved in production, distribution and promotion.

Broad environment consists of; demographic, natural, economic, technological, political-legal and sociocultural environment.

We will go into details of task environment later in our study. At this point we will look into broad environment and establish a link between these conditions and marketing decisions.

MARKETING ORIENTATION

MARKETING ORIENTATION
A marketing oriented firm (also called the marketing concept, or consumer focus) is one that allows the wants and needs of customers and potential customers to drive all the firm's strategic decisions. The firm's corporate culture is systematically committed to creating customer value. In order to determine customer wants, the company usually needs to conduct marketing research. The marketer expects that this process, if done correctly, will provide the company with a sustainable competitive advantage. The concept of marketing orientation was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s at Harvard University and at a handful of forward thinking companies. It replaced the previous sales orientation that was
prevalent between the mid 1950s and the early 1970s, and the production orientation that predominated prior to the mid 1950s. Since the concept was first introduced in the late 1960s, it as been modified,repackaged, and renamed as "customer focus", "the marketing philosophy", "market driven", "customer intimacy", and "the marketing concept".

Customer Experience Management

In previous lectures, we have discussed Internal and External Customers. In this lecture, we will discuss CUSTOMER NEEDS AND EXPECTATIONS and identify as to how we in Marketing attempt to satisfy them.

NEED
Needs can be described as human requirements. Need is there and its natural. We need food to satisfy our hunger, water to quench out thirst. Of course need can be more than just food, water and shelter. We need recreation, education, entertainment and lots of other things to sustain our living.

WANT
Need becomes Want, when they are directed towards a specific object. When hungry we need food; but we want say a burger. Want can vary from place to place and from people to people. A man in USA can want a burger to eat when hungry whereas a man in Pakistan needs a ‘Nan”. Want can be different at different income levels and in various times.

DEMAND
Want becomes a demand when backed up by an individual’s ability to pay for it. A hungry person can want a burger, but does he have money to demand a burger. Or is there a burger available to him?

MARKETING JOB
is not to create Need. Need is there. Marketing function is to offer a specific product
at a certain price and at a certain place (where need is) and at the time when Need is. If marketing function is performed properly, the product is sold. Or else it would not sell, no matter what?

Bench Mark of Marketing

Marketing, as a discipline, has traveled a long distance in the last four decades. It is a craft of linking the producers of goods and services with the existing and potential customers. The changes in the consumer behavior, market place, channels of distribution, the merchandizing, display and almost anything have been tremendous in the past few decades. The speed of change is stupendous. Major shopping malls, the range of choices, the buying pattern from personal to internet buying, credit cards etc has taken long strides towards difference and has totally changed business outlook. The demand for more sophisticated products has emerged almost in every field. Products have today very close similarities. The research has created nearly the same kind of services and customer aids. Marketers are today faced with tough decisions. One wrong decision or delayed decision can completely put business back and give competitors edge over the market place, which in itself is a tough situation to face.

Today, we call it “marketing for the millennium” which is self-explanatory and challenging. Students must learn to deal with advances in technology and its impact on marketing. Website today is perhaps as important as packing.

One marketing specialist said it all
“The future isn’t ahead of us. It has already happened”.

Marketing is typically seen as the task of creating, promoting and delivering goods and services from producers to consumers.

It has been so since long and perhaps marketing sounds easy if we closely look at the situation. But only when we analyze, we learn how many changes have taken place in each sector of this creating, promoting and delivering. The markets have expanded from cities to international; the mode of transport has changed. Internet and satellite communication has made the globe shrink to almost a few seconds now. In fact all things have changed. Marketing itself has incorporated many facets. Marketing today is difficult because of awareness and exchange of information.

The Marketing task is not only to deliver the product. In fact, it entails much more than just promotion and delivery. Marketing now is:

“Right product for the Right people at the Right time at the Right place at a Right price with Right services”.

The marketing challenges are to find what is Right?. Marketing task is to stimulate demand for company’s product. Marketing task is to manage demand, just as production and logistics professional are responsible for supply management. For demand management., Marketing involves comprehensive understanding of product ( goods and services), experiences, events, the consumers, the places, information, Ideas,properties and even its own organization to be able to answer what is right, for whom, where, when and how?

Marketers are said to be Managers of Demand. They have to know much more than just their own product as it used to be.

To be able to answer questions more correctly, marketers must understand first the true import of some of these terms:

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