How do environmental factors influence an organization’s marketing strategy?
Environmental factors can be defined as the players and forces that are external to marketing but influence marketing management’s capacity to develop and maintain flourishing relationships with intended customers. Therefore, these factors largely influence all aspects of an organization including the marketing strategy. Consequently, different organizations are affected differently by the environmental factors, depending on their size and type of industry. Environmental factors can basically be grouped into technological, political, socio-cultural and economical factors. All of these factors influence an organization’s marketing strategy in dissimilar ways. Initially, technology has largely impacted on the nature of marketing merchandises and services in organizations. Notably, organizations are forced to align their marketing strategies with the existent technological innovations in the present market. With the invention of the internet for instance, most organizations have transformed their marketing strategies to international levels through online blogs and social media sites.
Secondly, political or legal factors also affect the marketing strategies of organizations. These factors constitute of laws, restrictions, state agencies and pressure groups that influence an organization’s marketing strategies with reference to the performance of its activities. An organization has to abide by laws and standards established by the state and local governments in the marketing of its products. Manufacturer companies for example, have to ensure that their marketing strategies do not interfere with the environmental laws in place. Additionally, there are socio-cultural factors that immensely influence the marketing strategy of an organization. These factors refer to population characteristics, norms and forces that influence the perceptions, inclinations and behaviors held by a given society. Normally, an organization has to formulate its marketing strategy to meet up with the culture and preference of its targeted customers. Language is one of the most important cultural aspects for example. Consequently, an organization needs to align its communication programs and device communication to incorporate the language familiar to its customers.
Lastly, economic factors like income, competition and resources that affect cost of marketing products and services also influence the marketing strategy adopted by an organizations. An organization puts into consideration all the above factors in determining its marketing strategy. An organization has to keep abreast with the existent competition in the market for example, and adjust its strategies appropriately so that it can maintain its customers.
Define Primary and Secondary research. Under what conditions should primary and secondary research be used? Include the advantages and disadvantages of each method.
Market research is required to ensure customer’s needs are correctly addressed. There are two main approaches to this research; primary and secondary research. Primary research refers to research that is designed and conducted personally by an individual. This type of research is initiated by posing questions, performing trials and assembling results. Primary research can be structured as either qualitative or quantitative. Secondary research on the other hand refers to research that utilizes information and data that other researchers have already gathered. This information can be obtained from researches previously conducted by government bureaus, commerce chambers, trade unions and additional organizations. Primary research should be used when the researcher intends to obtain accurate results to meet his or her needs. Secondary research on the other hand should be used when the research covers broader aspects which are not directly related to the needs of the researcher.
There are various advantages and disadvantages that come with using either type of research. Secondary research is advantageous because information required is easily accessible. Information can be easily obtained from online sources like websites, in magazines or home libraries. Additionally, secondary research is more cost effective. Consequently, most of the information required for this kind or research can be freely obtained or obtained at very low cost. This is because this type of research does not require the actual application of research instruments. Secondary research on the other hand has a disadvantage of not being directly adapted to the particular needs of the researcher. Because of this, secondary research may not be practical like the primary research.
Similarly, primary research has its own advantage. This type of research is usually suited to the actual needs of the researcher. Most importantly, the researcher is able to control the design of the research to translate to what he is investigating. Conversely, Primary research has a demerit of being much costly to initiate. This type of research requires the application of data collection instruments like questionnaires as well as data analysis apparatus. These instruments are costly to formulate and administer. Furthermore, this type of research is time consuming, since it entails the whole process of collecting primary data and analyzing the data to obtain results.
