The Structure of the Marketing Environment Essay Example

The Structure of the Marketing Environment Essay Example The Structure of the Marketing Environment Paper The Structure of the Marketing Environment Paper   The consumer occupies the core/central position of all business activities and hence occupies the Centre of the marketing environment. The organization with its resources and having a policy and structure surrounds the consumer with its particular market offering as do its competitors, suppliers and other intermediaries. This micromanagement of marketing is again affected by the macro environment, which consists of the government, technical, political, social, economic factors. This is graphically represented by below 1 . The major external and uncontrollable factors that influence an organizations decision making, and affect its performance and strategies. These factors include the economic factors; demographics; legal, political, and social conditions; technological changes; and natural forces. 2. Specific examples of macro environment influences include competitors, changes in interest rates, changes in cultural tastes, disastrous weather, or government regulations. PESTLE Macro Environmental Analysis PESTLE The PESTLE Analysis is a framework used to scan the organizations external macro environment. The letters stand for Political, Economic Socio-cultural, Technological, Legal and Environmental. Some approaches will add in extra factors, such as International, or remove some to reduce it to PEST. However, these are all merely variations on a theme. The important principle is identifying the key factors from the wider, uncontrollable external environment that might affect the organization. The PESTLE Factors We start with the Political forces. First of all, political factors refer to the stability of the political environment and the attitudes of political parties or movements. This may manifest in government influence on tax policies, or government involvement in trading agreements. Political factors are inevitably entwined with Legal factors such as national employment laws, international trade regulations and restrictions, monopolies and mergers rules, and consumer protection. The difference between Political and Legal factors is that Political refers to attitudes and approaches, whereas gal factors are those which have become law and regulations. Legal needs to be complied with whereas Political may represent influences, restrictions or opportunities, but they are not mandatory. Economic factors represent the wider economy so may include economic growth rates, levels of employment ND unemployment, costs of raw materials such as energy, petrol and steel, interest rates and monetary policies, exchange rates and inflation rates. These may also vary from one country to another. Socio-cultural factors represent the culture of the society that an organization operates within. They may include demographics, age distribution, population growth rates, level of education, distribution of wealth and social classes, living conditions and lifestyle. Technological factors refer to the rate of new inventions and development, changes in information and mobile technology, changes in internet and e-commerce or even mobile commerce, and government spending on research. There is often a tendency to focus Technological developments on digital and internet-related areas, but it should also include materials development and new methods Of manufacture, distribution and logistics. Environmental impacts can include issues such as limited natural resources, waste disposal and recycling procedures. Additional Considerations A newer force which is gaining in importance is ethics. These can be defined by the set of moral principles and values that govern the actions and decisions of an individual or group. Ethics and morals serve as guidelines on how to act rightly and justly when individuals are faced with moral dilemmas. This force could include corporate social responsibility, fair trade, affiliation between corporations and charities. A particular problem may exist with how ethical factors relates to legal forces as they may be at different stages in development. Something may be ethical but not protected by law, whereas other activities may not be ethical, but are legal. A PESTLE analysis should feed into a SOOT analysis as it helps to determine the threats and opportunities represented by macro-environment forces that he organization usually cannot control. On an international basis, it is best to perform the analysis on a country-by-country basis because factors can differ greatly between countries (or even regions). Marketing Environment Micro The micro marketing environment consists of certain forces that are part of an organizations marketing process, but remain external to the organization. This micro marketing environment that surrounds organizations can be complex by nature; however the company has an element of control over how it operates within this environment. Marketing helps you to manage and aka sense of this complexity. The illustration above summarizes the order of the immediate external marketing environment that businesses operate in. Current and Potential Customers Your customers are vital to the growth and sustainability of your company. In order to grow you must locate customers, understand their needs and then satisfy those needs both efficiently and profitably. Competitors Your competitors however have the same remit as you when it comes to sourcing and satisfying the needs of the customer. They will make it difficult to liaise with customer groups, as by definition they are largely pursuing the name sets of customers as you. As a marketer, you must therefore not only monitor what competitors are doing in the external marketing environment today, but to also anticipate their likely response to your campaigns and to predict what they will do tomorrow. Intermediaries (Distributors/Wholesalers/ Retailers) Your business may require a network of wholesalers, distributors and/or retailer. These intermediaries provide an invaluable service in getting your products to the customer. You must therefore think carefully about how best to distribute your goods and build relationships. This area can be fierce in intention as not everyone can get access to the channels of distribution that they want. Suppliers One other important area to consider in the external marketing environment is your suppliers. A key supplier can be an important part of your business and may even attribute to your competitive advantage. Losing important suppliers can interrupt production flow or your competitive edge and prevent you from getting your product to your customers. Choice of suppliers, negotiation of terms and relationship building all become important tasks of the marketer. The wider marketing environment, discussed in a separate knowledge sheet, covers all other influences that might provide opportunities or threats to the organization. These include technological development, legal constraints, the economic environment and coloratura changes. This brief overview of the world in which companies operate in demonstrates that there are many relationships that matter. These need to be managed if the company is to conduct its business successfully. The main responsibility for managing these relationships lies within the marketing department. Using a SOOT SOOT is an important tool in auditing the external and internal environment f the organization. A SOOT Analysis should be more than a basic listing of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Most organizations have the same, common-sense type of threats, such as competitors, technological changes, regulation and deregulation, or weaknesses such as high price, but these are all very general, hard to control elements meaning the utility can be quite limited. As Cornfields Professor Malcolm McDonald puts it, real SHOTS should be more concise and specific.

Racial Profiling and Police Brutality Against Hispanics

Racial Profiling and Police Brutality Against Hispanics Police brutality is hardly just a black issue, as  Hispanics all over the country increasingly face police abuse, racial profiling, and  hate crimes. Often this misconduct stems from  xenophobia and rising concerns about undocumented immigrants. Across the nation, police departments have made headlines for their mistreatment of Latinos. These cases have not only involved undocumented immigrants but also Hispanic Americans and permanent legal residents. In states as varied as Connecticut, California, and Arizona, Latinos have suffered at the hands of police in egregious manners. Latinos Targeted in Maricopa County Racial profiling. Unlawful detainment. Stalking. These are some of the inappropriate and illegal behaviors that officers in Arizona have allegedly engaged in, according to a 2012 complaint the U.S. Justice Department filed against the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. MCSO deputies  stopped Latino drivers anywhere from four to nine times more than other drivers, in some cases  only to detain them for long periods. In one instance, deputies pulled over a car with four Latino men inside. The driver hadn’t violated any traffic laws, but the officers proceeded to force him and his passengers out of the car and make them wait on the curb, zip-tied, for an hour. The Justice Department also detailed incidents where the authorities  followed Hispanic women to their homes and roughed them up. The federal government alleges that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio routinely failed to investigate cases of sexual assault against Hispanic women. The aforementioned cases refer to police interaction with Latinos on the streets of Maricopa County, but inmates in the county jail have also suffered at the hands of law enforcement. Female prisoners have been denied feminine hygiene products  and called derogatory names. Hispanic male inmates have been on the receiving end of racial slurs and put-downs such as â€Å"wetbacks† and â€Å"stupid Mexicans.† Border Patrol Killings It’s not just local law enforcement agencies that have been accused of racially profiling Latinos and committing acts of police brutality against them, it’s also the U.S. Border Patrol. In April 2012, Latino advocacy group Presente.org launched a petition to raise awareness about the Border Patrol’s fatal beating of Anastasio Hernndez-Rojas, which took place two years earlier. The group launched the petition after a video of the beating surfaced in hopes of pressuring  the Justice Department to take action against the officers involved. â€Å"If justice isn’t served for Anastasio, even when the video clearly shows injustice, Border Patrol agents will continue their pattern of abuse and lethal force,† the Presente team said in a statement. Between 2010 to 2012, Border Patrol agents were involved in seven killings, according to the civil rights group. LAPD Officer Found Guilty of Profiling Hispanics In an unprecedented move in March 2012, the Los Angeles Police Department determined that one of its officers had engaged in racial profiling. Which group did the officer in question target? Latinos, according to the LAPD. Patrick Smith, a white officer on the job for 15 years, pulled over a disproportionate amount of Latinos during traffic stops, the Los Angeles Times reported. He allegedly tried to conceal the fact that he’d so often targeted Hispanic drivers by misidentifying them as white on paperwork. Smith may be the first LAPD officer found guilty of racial profiling, but he’s unlikely the only one engaging in the practice. â€Å"A 2008 study of LAPD data by a Yale researcher found blacks and Latinos were subjected to stops, frisks, searches, and arrests at significantly higher rates than whites, regardless of whether they lived in high-crime neighborhoods,† the Times noted. Moreover, 250 allegations of racial profiling are made against officers annually. East Haven Police Under Fire News broke in January 2012 that federal investigators had charged police in East Haven, Conn., with obstruction of justice, excessive force, conspiracy and other crimes concerning their treatment of Latinos in the city. According to the New York Times, East Haven police officers, â€Å"stopped and detained people, particularly immigrants, without reason...sometimes slapping, hitting or kicking them when they were handcuffed, and once smashing a mans head into a wall.† They tried to cover up their behavior by targeting bystanders who witnessed and tried to document their illegal acts. They also allegedly tried to recover surveillance tapes from area businesses that captured their abuses on video.