The 5 Uncontrollable Environmental Forces
There are two aspects of marketing that marketers have to understand and work with. These two factors are the controllable factors which are known as the four Ps of marketing; price, promotion, place, and product, and the uncontrollable factors, social, economic, technological, regulatory, and competition. An organization has complete control of the controllable factors, however, what happens when a firm faces the uncontrollable factors:
The 5 Environmental Forces
1. Social
2 Economic
3. Regulatory
4. Competition
5. Technology
Example of these factors would be; consumers changing their needs and wants (social), a change in technology (technology), government setting new regulations (regulatory), the state of the economy (economic), and a competitor entering the market (competition). The marketing manager has two options, work with or against these factors. A firms success is determined by how efficiently they deal with these factors when they occur.
For example, we know that house phones are becoming extinct because of cell phone (technology) so the companies who offer home service have to make a change or stop selling the service. A change in the marketing mix (four P’s) is generally how most organizations adapt to this new change. Now we can get a house phone for $9.99 per month (price) while most cell phone plans start at around 40 dollars per month. The home service company adjusted to the change in technology (uncontrollable factors) by changing one of the four P’s (controllable factor). They understood that a change in technology is something they have no control over and there wasn’t anything they could do to stop the change from occurring. This is where planning and forecasting are huge in marketing.