Chapter 2

• The elements of the company’s microenvironment include the company, suppliers, marketing intermediaries, customers, and publics.
• Macro environmental forces that affect the company’s ability to serve its customers include political, legal, regulatory, economic, social, technological, and competitive forces.
• The microenvironment consists of actors and forces close to the company that can affect its ability to serve its customers, including the company, suppliers, market intermediaries, customers, and publics.
• Competitors are part of the microenvironment and must be monitored closely.
• Suppliers are firms and individuals that provide the resources needed by the company to produce its goods and services.
• Marketing intermediaries are firms that help the company promote, sell, and distribute its goods to the final buyers.
• Disintermediation is the elimination of intermediaries.
• Marketing services agencies include marketing research firms, advertising agencies, media firms, and marketing consulting firms that help companies to target and promote their products to the right market.
• Financial intermediaries include banks, credit companies, insurance companies, and other firms that help hospitality companies to finance their transactions or insure risks associated with the buying and selling of goods and services.
• Customers are any group that has an actual or potential interest in or impact on an organization’s ability to achieve its objectives.
• The macroenvironment consists of the larger societal forces that affect the whole microenvironment: demographic, economic, natural, technological, political, competitor, and cultural forces.
• Each firm must consider its size and industry position in relation to its competitors.
• Demographic environment is the study of human populations in terms of size, generation group, location, age, sex, race, occupation, and other statistics.
• Economic environment consists of factors that affect consumer purchasing power and spending patterns.
• Natural environment consists of natural resources required by marketers or affected by marketing activities.
• Technological environment includes science and technology that constantly changes, impacting the marketing environment.
• Political environment is made up of laws, government agencies, and pressure groups that influence and limit various organizations and individuals in society.
• Cultural environment includes institutions and other forces that affect society’s basic values, perceptions, preferences, and behaviors.
• Ethical factors include business responsibilities while delivering goods to the community.
• Many companies view the marketing environment as an “uncontrollable” element to which they must adapt.
• Environmental management perspective involves taking aggressive actions to affect the publics and forces in the marketing environment.
• Environmental scanning is a review of external sources to discover factors that impact a business.
• One popular method of environmental scanning is SWOT analysis.