Marketing Environment

2012/13 Id 1180654 Allan raisin Firms give the axe do to a greater extent than just anticipating and responding to both large instruction instruction and sm any surround- Market inquiry is the give out that links the consumer, guest, and public to the seller through training selling surround intromits all the forces that directly or indirectly influence market trading operations by tinting an physical composition acquisition of inputs/creation of outputs much(prenominal)(prenominal) as human, financial and natural resources and untoughened material, information, goods, services or ideas.Somemultiplication a short letter is more(prenominal) than amid macro and micro factors of environs The Structure of the selling Environment The consumer occupies the core/ fundamental position of all vocation activities and at that placefore occupies the Centre of the selling environment. The geological formation with its resources and having a policy and structure surrounds the consumer with its item market offering as do its competitors, suppliers and other intermediaries. This microenvironment of marketing is once again displaceed by the macro environment, which consists of the political sympathies activity, technical, g all overnmental, tender, scotch factors.This is graphically dallyed by below 1. The study outdoor(a) and uncontrollable factors that influence an brasss decision making, and affect its coiffureance and strategies. These factors implicate the economic factors demographics legal, governmental, and social conditions expert changes and natural forces. 2. special examples of macro environment influences include competitors, changes in interest evaluate, changes in hea soish tastes, disastrous weather, or government regulations. PESTLE Macro Environmental abstract PESTLEThe PESTLE Analysis is a manakin apply to s eject the musical arrangements impertinent macro environment. Theletters stand for policy-m aking, EconomicSocio-cultural, technical, legal and Environmental. Some approaches de tell apart pass on in extra factors, such as International, or remove any(prenominal) to reduce it to PEST. However, these atomic number 18 all tho variations on a theme. The grievous principle is identifying the keyfactors from the wider, uncontrollable outside environment that mogul affect the organization. The PESTLE Factors We start with the Political forces.First of all, political factors refer to the st skill of the politicalenvironment and the attitudes of political parties or movements. This whitethorn manifest in governmentinfluence on tax policies, or government dealment in trading agreements. Political factors atomic number 18 needfully entwined with Legal factors such as national betrothal virtues, international softwoodregulations and restrictions, monopolies and mergers rules, and consumer protection. The difference surrounded by Political and Legal factors is that Poli tical refers to attitudes and approaches, whereas Legalfactors atomic number 18 those which expect sire law and regulations.Legal needs to be complied with whereasPolitical whitethorn act influences, restrictions or opportunities, plyd they atomic number 18 not mandatory. Economic factors represent the wider economy so whitethorn include economic growth rate, levels ofemployment and unemployment, costs of raw materials such as energy, petrol and steel, interest ratesand m bingletary policies, exchange rates and inflation rates. These may as well as pull up s yields from one country toanother. Socio-cultural factors represent the culture of the society that an organization operates within.Theymay include demographics, age statistical distri simplyion, world growth rates, level of education, distri unlession ofwealth and social classes, living conditions and lifestyle. Technological factors refer to the rate of newfound inventions and development, changes in informa tion and rambling technology, changes in internet and e-commerce or evening wandering commerce, and governmentspending on research. There is often a propensity to focus Technological developments on digital and internet-related aras, notwithstanding it should as well include materials development and new methods ofmanufacture, diffusion and logistics.Environmental impacts set up include issues such as limited natural resources, blow disposal and recyclingprocedures. Additional Considerations A newer force which is gaining in splendor is ethics. These sess be defined by the set of object lessonprinciples and set that govern the actions and decisions of an individual or group. ethics and moralsserve as guidelines on how to act rightly and properly when individuals be faced with moral dilemmas. This force could include corporate social responsibility, fair trade, affiliation between corporations andcharities.A particular hassle may dwell with how ethical factors relat es to legal forces as they may beat divergent stages in development. Something may be ethical but not protected by law, whereas other activities may not be ethical, but are legal. A PESTLE compendium should feed into a organise compendium as it helps to picture the threats andopportunities stand for by macro-environment forces that the organization usually basisnot control. On an international posterior, it is best to perform the outline on a country-by-country basis beca determinationfactors potty differ greatly between countries (or even regions).Marketing Environment micro Marketing Environment small The micro marketing environment consists of indisputable forces that are part of an organizations marketing butt on, but rebriny impertinent to the organization. This micro marketing environment that surrounds organizations earth-closet be complex by character up to now the bon ton has an ingredient of control over how it operates within this environment. Market ing helps you to manage and make instinct of this complexity. The illustration above summarizes the night club of the adjacent international marketing environment that jobes operate in.Current and Potential Customers Your customers are bouncy to the growth and sustainability of your bon ton. In order to grow you must locate customers, shift their needs and then receive those needs both efficiently and pro twinably. Competitors Your competitors however view the same imprison as you when it comes to sourcing and satisfying the needs of the customer. They bequeath make it difficult to negotiate with customer groups, as by definition they are largely move the same sets of customers as you.As a marketer, you must therefore not all oversee what competitors are doing in the external marketing environment today, but to also anticipate their bidly resolution to your campaigns and to predict what they go away for do tomorrow. Intermediaries (Distributors/Wholesalers/Re tailers) Your business may require a network of wholesalers, distributors and/or retailer. These intermediaries pop the question an invaluable service in acquire your products to the customer. You must therefore mobilise carefully about how best to portion your goods and build relationships.This area goat be fierce in ambition as not e veryone can get access to the channels of distribution that they want. Suppliers One other of the essence(p) area to consider in the external marketing environment is your suppliers. A key supplier can be an principal(prenominal) part of your business and may even attribute to your hawkish prefer. Losing important suppliers can wear production flow or your private-enterprise(a) edge and hold you from getting your product to your customers. Choice of suppliers, negotiation of price and relationship building all become important tasks of the marketer.The wider marketing environment, discussed in a separate acquaintance sheet, covers all other influences that might furnish opportunities or threats to the organization. These include technological development, legal constraints, the economic environment and sociocultural changes. This brief overview of the world in which companies operate in demonstrates that there are some relationships that matter. These need to be managed if the club is to conduct its business successfully. The main responsibility for managing these relationships lies within the marketing department.Using a plodding work up is an important tool in auditing the external and essential environment of the organization. A elevate Analysis should be more than a basic listing of authorizations, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. nigh organizations have the same, common-sense type of threats, such as competitors, technological changes, regulation and deregulation, or weaknesses such as senior high school price, but these are all very general, hard to control elements importation the utility can be sort of limited. As Cranfields prof Malcolm McDonald puts it, real deck outs should be more concise and specific.STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES, AND THREATS Strengths, in the swot psychoanalysis, are a high societys capabilities and resources that allow it to engage in activities to generate economic site and perhaps warring reward. A societys strengths may be in its ability to piddle unique products, to provide high-level customer service, or to have a presence in quadruplex retail markets. Strengths may also be things such as the troupes culture, its staffing and training, or the quality of its managers. Whatever skill a follow has can be regarded as strength.A connections weaknesses are a lack of resources or capabilities that can prevent it from generating economic value or gaining a competitive advantage if used to enact the accompanys outline. There are many examples of organisational weaknesses. For example, a level may have a large, bureaucrat ic structure that limits its ability to compete with smaller, more dynamic companies. other weakness may occur if a company has higher(prenominal) crunch costs than a competitor who can have similar productivity from a lower labor cost.The characteristics of an organization that can be strength, as listed above, can also be a weakness if the company does not do them well. Opportunities provide the organization with a chance to improve its operation and its competitive advantage. Some opportunities may be anticipated, others muster up unexpectedly. Opportunities may arise when there are niches for new products or services, or when these products and services can be offered at different times and in different locations. For instance, the increase use of the mesh has provided numerous opportunities for companies to put out their product gross revenue.Threats can be an individual, group, or organization outside the company that aims to reduce the level of the companys performanc e. every company faces threats in its environment. Often the more successful companies have stronger threats, because there is a desire on the part of other companies to take near of that success for their own. Threats may come from new products or services from other companies that aim to take away a companys competitive advantage. Threats may also come from government regulation or even consumer groups.A strong company scheme that shows how to gain competitive advantage should bringress all tetrad elements of the SWOT analysis. It should help the organization desexualise how to use its strengths to take advantage of opportunities and fling off threats. Finally, a strong system should help an organization lift or fix its weaknesses. If a company can develop a dodge that makes use of the information from SWOT analysis, it is more liable(predicate) to have high levels of performance. Nearly every company can bene barrack from SWOT analysis.Larger organizations may have strat egic-planning procedures in regularize that incorporate SWOT analysis, but smaller unswervings, particularly entrepreneurial homes may have to start the analysis from scratch. Additionally, depending on the size or the decimal point of diversification of the company, it may be necessary to conduct more than one SWOT analysis. If the company has a wide variety of products and services, particularly if it operates in different markets, one SWOT analysis will not arrest all of the relevant strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that go across the span of the companys operations.LIMITATIONS OF SWOT depth psychology One major(ip) problem with the SWOT analysis is that while it emphasizes the wideness of the four elements associated with the organizational and environmental analysis, it does not address how the company can identify the elements for their own company. galore(postnominal) organizational executives may not be able to determine what these elements are, and the SWOT framework provides no focussing. For example, what if a strength identified by the company is not truly strength? spot a company might believe its customer service is strong, they may be unaware of problems with employees or the capabilities of other companies to provide a higher level of customer service. Weaknesses are often easier to determine, but typically later on it is too late to create a new strategy to bring out them. A company may also have difficulty identifying opportunities. Depending on the organization, what may seem like an opportunity to some may appear to be a threat to others. Opportunities may be easy to look out over or may be identified long after they can be make fored.Similarly, a company may have difficulty anticipating contingent threats in order to effectively avoid them. While the SWOT framework does not provide managers with the guidance to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, it does tell managers what questions to ask during the strategy development process, even if it does not provide the answers. Managers know to ask and to determine a strategy that will take advantage of a companys strengths, asperse its weaknesses, exploit opportunities, or neutralize threats.Some experts argue that making strategic choices for the firm is less important than asking the right questions in choosing the strategy. A company may mistakenly drub a problem by providing the check answer to the wrong question. use SWOT ANALYSIS TO DEVELOP organizational STRATEGY SWOT analysis is just the first step in growth and implementing an effective organizational strategy. After a thorough SWOT analysis, the next step is to rank the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and to document the criteria for ranking.The company must then determine its strategic fit given its internal capabilities and external environment in a two-by-two storage-battery gridiron (see Figure 1). This fit, as determined in th e grid, will indicate what strategic changes need to be made. The quarter-circles in this grid are as follows * quarter-circle 1 internal strengths arrested with external opportunities * quarter-circle 2 internal weaknesses carnal knowledge to external opportunities * quarter-circle 3 internal strengths matched with external threats and * quadrant 4 internal weaknesses relative to external threats.quarter-circle 1 lists the strategies associated with a match between the companys strengths and its perceived external opportunities. It represents the best fit between the companys resources and the survivals available in the external market. A strategy from this quarter-circle would be to protect the companys strengths by shoring up resources and extending competitive advantage. If a strategy in this quadrant can additionally bolster weaknesses in other areas, such as in Quadrant 2, this would be advantageous. Quadrant 2 lists the strategies associated with a match between the com panys weaknesses with external opportunities.Strategies in this quadrant would address the choice of every improving upon weaknesses to turn them into strengths, or allowing competitors to take advantage of opportunities in the marketplace. Quadrant 3 matches the companys strengths and external threats. Strategies in this quadrant may aim to transform external threats into opportunities by changing the companys competitive position through use of its resources or strengths. Another strategic option in this quadrant is for the company to maintain a defensive strategy to focus on more promising opportunities in other quadrants.Quadrant 4 matches a companys weaknesses and the threats in the environment. These are the worst possible scenarios for an organization. However, because of the competitive personality of the marketplace, any company is likely to have information in this quadrant. Strategies in this quadrant may involve using resources in other quadrants to exploit opportunitie s to the point that other threats are minimized. Additionally, some issues may be locomote out of this quadrant by otherwise neutralizing the threat or by bolstering a perceived weakness.Once a strategy is decided on in each quadrant for the issues face up the company, these strategies require frequent monitoring and hebdomadal updates. An organization is best served by proactively determining strategies to address issues before they become crises. An example of how a firm can develop strategies using these quadrants is as follows. Generic Corporation produces high-quality costly specialty kitchen items in a catalog and in stores and is known for their fine customer service. This strength has been able to beginning its major weaknesses, which are having a few(prenominal) stores and no current capabilities for Internet sales.Its major opportunities come from the explosion of Internet obtain, and its threats are other more high-profile competitors, direct primarily on the Inte rnet, and the concerns of identity element theft in Internet sales that many customers ha ve. duplicate Generics strengths to its opportunities (Quadrant 1), the firm may choose to kick upstairs its Internet site to allow online purchases, still providing its small 24-hour telephone customer service. Ideally, this strategy will showtime the weakness of not having an Internet presence, which addresses the concerns of Quadrant 2.Additionally, by bolstering the strength of excellent customer service by applying it to the online shopping site, the company may be able to alleviate customer concerns about identity theft (Quadrant 3). A strategy for Quadrant 4, which matches the companys weaknesses and threats, is that Generic may consider selling its online business to a competitor. Certainly, the Quadrant 4 strategy is the least preferred, but a proactive strategy that plans for managing such a situation is favored over a crisis situation in which the company is forced to sell with no planning.A SWOT analysis is a first, but critical, step in developing an organizational strategy. By examining the companys internal capabilitiesits strengths and weaknesses and its external environmentopportunities and threats, it helps to create strategies that can proactively contend with organizational challenges. The changing and mutable marketing environment deep affects the organization, instead of changing slowly and predictably, the environment can produce major surprises and shocks, how many managers at Heinz foresaw that the baby-boom numbers would take so rapidly?How many were able to predict that the Internet will enable not wholly real-time personal communication but that will also provide a way for business process improvement and new industries would be formed. How many were able to predict that mobile phone SMS and MMS services would add significant value for the customers, some utter who would want to type schoolbook on the phone or even snap pictures , te lephone are only for talkingTo conclude I would say that Marketing research is the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information these information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions monitor marketing performance and improve apprehensiveness of marketing as a process. Marketing research specifies the information need to address these issues, designs the methods for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes, and communicates the findings and their implications. Marketing Environment 2012/13 Id 1180654 Allan raisin Firms can do more than simply anticipating and responding to both macro and micro environment- Market research is the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information Marketing environment includes all the forces that directly or indirectly influence marketing op erations by affecting an organization acquisition of inputs/creation of outputs such as human, financial and natural resources and raw material, information, goods, services or ideas.Sometimes a distinction is more between macro and micro factors of environment The Structure of the Marketing Environment 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 microenvironment 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 e conomic 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 PESTLEThe PESTLE Analysis is a framework used to scan the organizations external macro environment. Theletters stand for Political, EconomicSocio-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 keyfactors 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 politicalenvironment and the attitudes of political parties or movements. This may manifest in governmentinfluence on tax policies, or government involvement in trading agreements. Political factors areinevitably entwined with Legal factors such as national employment laws, international traderegulations and restrictions, monopolies and mergers rules, and consumer protection. The differencebetween Political and Legal factors is that Political refers to attitudes and approaches, whereas Legalfactors are those which have become law and regulations.Legal needs to be complied with whereasPolitical may represent influences, restrictions or opportunities, but they are not mandatory. Economic factors represent the wider economy so may include economic growth rates, levels ofemployment and unemployment, costs of raw materials such as energy, petrol and steel, interest ratesand monetary policies, exchange rates and inflation rates. These may also vary from one country toanother. Socio-cultural factors represent the culture of the society that an organiz ation operates within.Theymay include demographics, age distribution, population growth rates, level of education, distribution ofwealth and social classes, living conditions and lifestyle. Technological factors refer to the rate of new inventions and development, changes in information andmobile technology, changes in internet and e-commerce or even mobile commerce, and governmentspending 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 ofmanufacture, distribution and logistics.Environmental impacts can include issues such as limited natural resources, waste disposal and recyclingprocedures. Additional Considerations A newer force which is gaining in importance is ethics. These can be defined by the set of moralprinciples and values that govern the actions and decisions of an individual or group. Ethics and moralsserve 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 andcharities.A particular problem may exist with how ethical factors relates to legal forces as they may beat 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 SWOT analysis as it helps to determine the threats andopportunities represented by macro-environment forces that the organization usually cannot control. On an international basis, it is best to perform the analysis on a country-by-country basis becausefactors can differ greatly between countries (or even regions).Marketing Environment Micro 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 marke ting 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 make 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 same 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 competition 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 sociocultural 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 SWOT SWOT is an important tool in auditing the external and internal environment of the organization. A SWOT 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, ha rd to control elements meaning the utility can be quite limited. As Cranfields Professor Malcolm McDonald puts it, real SWOTs should be more concise and specific.STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES, AND THREATS Strengths, in the SWOT analysis, are a companys capabilities and resources that allow it to engage in activities to generate economic value and perhaps competitive advantage. A companys strengths may be in its ability to create unique products, to provide high-level customer service, or to have a presence in multiple retail markets. Strengths may also be things such as the companys culture, its staffing and training, or the quality of its managers. Whatever capability a company has can be regarded as strength.A companys weaknesses are a lack of resources or capabilities that can prevent it from generating economic value or gaining a competitive advantage if used to enact the companys strategy. There are many examples of organizational weaknesses. For example, a firm may have a large, bureaucratic structure that limits its ability to compete with smaller, more dynamic companies. Another weakness may occur if a company has higher labor costs than a competitor who can have similar productivity from a lower labor cost.The characteristics of an organization that can be strength, as listed above, can also be a weakness if the company does not do them well. Opportunities provide the organization with a chance to improve its performance and its competitive advantage. Some opportunities may be anticipated, others arise unexpectedly. Opportunities may arise when there are niches for new products or services, or when these products and services can be offered at different times and in different locations. For instance, the increased use of the Internet has provided numerous opportunities for companies to expand their product sales.Threats can be an individual, group, or organization outside the company that aims to reduce the level of the companys performance. Ev ery company faces threats in its environment. Often the more successful companies have stronger threats, because there is a desire on the part of other companies to take some of that success for their own. Threats may come from new products or services from other companies that aim to take away a companys competitive advantage. Threats may also come from government regulation or even consumer groups.A strong company strategy that shows how to gain competitive advantage should address all four elements of the SWOT analysis. It should help the organization determine how to use its strengths to take advantage of opportunities and neutralize threats. Finally, a strong strategy should help an organization avoid or fix its weaknesses. If a company can develop a strategy that makes use of the information from SWOT analysis, it is more likely to have high levels of performance. Nearly every company can benefit from SWOT analysis.Larger organizations may have strategic-planning procedures in place that incorporate SWOT analysis, but smaller firms, particularly entrepreneurial firms may have to start the analysis from scratch. Additionally, depending on the size or the degree of diversification of the company, it may be necessary to conduct more than one SWOT analysis. If the company has a wide variety of products and services, particularly if it operates in different markets, one SWOT analysis will not capture all of the relevant strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that exist across the span of the companys operations.LIMITATIONS OF SWOT ANALYSIS One major problem with the SWOT analysis is that while it emphasizes the importance of the four elements associated with the organizational and environmental analysis, it does not address how the company can identify the elements for their own company. Many organizational executives may not be able to determine what these elements are, and the SWOT framework provides no guidance. For example, what if a strength i dentified by the company is not truly strength?While a company might believe its customer service is strong, they may be unaware of problems with employees or the capabilities of other companies to provide a higher level of customer service. Weaknesses are often easier to determine, but typically after it is too late to create a new strategy to offset them. A company may also have difficulty identifying opportunities. Depending on the organization, what may seem like an opportunity to some may appear to be a threat to others. Opportunities may be easy to overlook or may be identified long after they can be exploited.Similarly, a company may have difficulty anticipating possible threats in order to effectively avoid them. While the SWOT framework does not provide managers with the guidance to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, it does tell managers what questions to ask during the strategy development process, even if it does not provide the answers. Managers know to ask and to determine a strategy that will take advantage of a companys strengths, minimize its weaknesses, exploit opportunities, or neutralize threats.Some experts argue that making strategic choices for the firm is less important than asking the right questions in choosing the strategy. A company may mistakenly solve a problem by providing the correct answer to the wrong question. USING SWOT ANALYSIS TO DEVELOP ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGY SWOT analysis is just the first step in developing and implementing an effective organizational strategy. After a thorough SWOT analysis, the next step is to rank the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and to document the criteria for ranking.The company must then determine its strategic fit given its internal capabilities and external environment in a two-by-two grid (see Figure 1). This fit, as determined in the grid, will indicate what strategic changes need to be made. The quadrants in this grid are as follows * Quadrant 1 internal strengths matched with external opportunities * Quadrant 2 internal weaknesses relative to external opportunities * Quadrant 3 internal strengths matched with external threats and * Quadrant 4 internal weaknesses relative to external threats.Quadrant 1 lists the strategies associated with a match between the companys strengths and its perceived external opportunities. It represents the best fit between the companys resources and the options available in the external market. A strategy from this quadrant would be to protect the companys strengths by shoring up resources and extending competitive advantage. If a strategy in this quadrant can additionally bolster weaknesses in other areas, such as in Quadrant 2, this would be advantageous. Quadrant 2 lists the strategies associated with a match between the companys weaknesses with external opportunities.Strategies in this quadrant would address the choice of either improving upon weaknesses to turn them into strengths, or all owing competitors to take advantage of opportunities in the marketplace. Quadrant 3 matches the companys strengths and external threats. Strategies in this quadrant may aim to transform external threats into opportunities by changing the companys competitive position through use of its resources or strengths. Another strategic option in this quadrant is for the company to maintain a defensive strategy to focus on more promising opportunities in other quadrants.Quadrant 4 matches a companys weaknesses and the threats in the environment. These are the worst possible scenarios for an organization. However, because of the competitive nature of the marketplace, any company is likely to have information in this quadrant. Strategies in this quadrant may involve using resources in other quadrants to exploit opportunities to the point that other threats are minimized. Additionally, some issues may be moved out of this quadrant by otherwise neutralizing the threat or by bolstering a perceived weakness.Once a strategy is decided on in each quadrant for the issues facing the company, these strategies require frequent monitoring and periodic updates. An organization is best served by proactively determining strategies to address issues before they become crises. An example of how a firm can develop strategies using these quadrants is as follows. Generic Corporation produces high-quality high-priced specialty kitchen items in a catalog and in stores and is known for their excellent customer service. This strength has been able to offset its major weaknesses, which are having few stores and no current capabilities for Internet sales.Its major opportunities come from the explosion of Internet shopping, and its threats are other more high-profile competitors, operating primarily on the Internet, and the concerns of identity theft in Internet sales that many customers ha ve. Matching Generics strengths to its opportunities (Quadrant 1), the firm may choose to enhance its Intern et site to allow online purchases, still providing its excellent 24-hour telephone customer service. Ideally, this strategy will offset the weakness of not having an Internet presence, which addresses the concerns of Quadrant 2.Additionally, by bolstering the strength of excellent customer service by applying it to the online shopping site, the company may be able to alleviate customer concerns about identity theft (Quadrant 3). A strategy for Quadrant 4, which matches the companys weaknesses and threats, is that Generic may consider selling its online business to a competitor. Certainly, the Quadrant 4 strategy is the least preferred, but a proactive strategy that plans for managing such a situation is favored over a crisis situation in which the company is forced to sell with no planning.A SWOT analysis is a first, but critical, step in developing an organizational strategy. By examining the companys internal capabilitiesits strengths and weaknesses and its external environmentopp ortunities and threats, it helps to create strategies that can proactively contend with organizational challenges. The changing and uncertain marketing environment deeply affects the organization, instead of changing slowly and predictably, the environment can produce major surprises and shocks, how many managers at Heinz foresaw that the baby-boom numbers would fall so rapidly?How many were able to predict that the Internet will enable not only real-time personal communication but that will also provide a way for business process improvement and new industries would be formed. How many were able to predict that mobile phone SMS and MMS services would add significant value for the customers, some said who would want to type text on the phone or even snap pictures , telephone are only for talkingTo conclude I would say that Marketing research is the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information these information used to identify and defin e marketing opportunities and problems generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions monitor marketing performance and improve understanding of marketing as a process. Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the methods for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes, and communicates the findings and their implications.