In a diverse and constantly changing market, it is the challenge of the marketing department of a

corporation to respond to its environment adequately and in a way that promotes sales. However, it is not
enough to merely respond to changes in one’s environment. In order to truly be proactive, a corporation must
drive changes in their marketing environment itself, not merely respond to such changes. An effective
corporation must have a deep and detailed understanding of their marketing environment, and the
components of it.

A company’s marketing environment has two major components: the microenvironment and the
macroenvironment. The marketing microenvironment consists predominately of those who work in the
company, that is, the company’s internal environment, and that contributes to form the company’s identity.
The microenvironment is important from a marketing perspective, because these individuals and departments
within the company shape and influence marketing decisions. It is not just the marketing department of a
company that decides how a product should be marketed: research and development determines what
features a product has, accounting determines what marketing strategies are within the budget, and the CEO
has the ultimate decision over what products and marketing strategies should be pursued.

The macroenvironment, on the other hand, consists of large, powerful forces outside the company
that impact the microenvironment. There are far too many societal forces which compose the
macroenvironment to count, but several include demographics, the economy, nature, politics, and culture.
The effects that different aspects of the microenvironment can have on a company can be varied. Take the
economy, for example. If the economy is strong, the purchasing power of customers increases. Changes in
the economy will change how a company behaves, and influence the decisions it makes, such as how it
chooses to set prices.

Marketers must be able to keep up with environmental trends, and translate these trends into
opportunities to promote sales. They play this critical role for the corporation, primarily because they have
access to the tools to do so. Marketers have access to important demographics about the company: who is
consistently buying the company’s products and who is not. Marketers can track what kind of people are
seeing print ads, what kind of people are seeing online banner ads, what kind of people are hearing radio
ads, and what kind of people are watching televised ads.

This demographic information becomes crucial in marketing strategies. If individuals over 60 hear
about a company primarily for print ads, and a new product is to be marketed specifically to individuals over
60, then it makes no sense for the product to be advertised as a banner ad on a website. With all of these
taken in to account, marketers are tasked to analyze the changes on demographic trends and development
such as the changes happening on the age and family structure, population shifts, educational characteristics
and population diversity. This will enable the company, especially the marketing department, to reach both
those at home and abroad with a more diversified and relatively new marketing programs that will facilitate
the company to take advantage of opportunities in fast-growing segments.

Other forces that affects the company’s macroenvironment namely economic, natural, technological, political,
social and cultural environment focuses more on the community to whom they are to give services to or
goods to. The center of attention of the concerns of these forces are the consumer purchasing power and
spending pattern - involves income and behavior towards changes in it, environmental concerns - deals with
the growing shortages of raw materials, new technologies - creates new markets and opportunities, law and
government agencies - influence and limit certain activities for the good of the society as a whole, social
responsibility - cover potential marketing abuses and basic beliefs and values - views and behaviors found
in everyday life.

In general, marketing management cannot always control environmental forces but it could adjust to
these certain changes or settle to what it is now. Individuals involved with marketing serve two roles in this
respect: they use marketing research to gain information about the micro and macroenvironments of the
company, and use the same research to study their customers and competitors.

A company could not function without strong marketing strategies and capable marketers. Marketing
determines so much about how a company is perceived by the public, and how it responds to changes in its
environment, as well as drives its competition, and society around it to achieve and do better.

Works Cited

Kotler, Phillip and Gary M. Armstrong (2006), Principles of Marketing (Version 12/E). Pearson Education Inc.
New Jersey