1. Marketing Environment: Marketing environment is ever changing. Analysis of the external environment consist of identification of opportunities and threats and tracing it to a particular source. The environment is changing so fast that the rate of change in the environment out scrip’s the rate of change in the organization. Environment means the sub-total of external factors within which any organization operates. According to Philip Kotler, “external factors and forces that affect the firm’s ability to develop and maintain successful transactions and relationships with the target customers. Marketing environment includes all forces that effect marketing and operations of any organization such forces may be both external and internal.

2. Marketing Environment Variables: The marketing environment variables include all those factors which are external to a firm and which affect the marketing process. Therefore, the company’s marketing executives must constantly monitor the changing marketing scene and observe the changing environment through marketing research. The marketing environment consists of 2 factors which affects the company’s abilities to serve its markets: 1) Controllable Factors: The controllable factors are well within the grip of the firm and is easy to adjust to suit the changes. These consist of marketing policies and marketing strategies . Framing of marketing policies is done by the top management and the strategies by middle level management

3. 2) Uncontrollable Factors: Controllable factors will have to filtered through various uncontrollable environmental factors before they reach to the consumers various elements under controllable variables affect an organization and its marketing strategies. The uncontrollable environment consists of 2 levels i.e. micro-environment and macro-environment. Micro-Environment: This consists of elements or forces that influence marketing directly. It includes suppliers, marketing intermediaries, customers, competitors, and the general public. Macro-Environment: This environment includes the following:

5. forced some of the business people to disintegrate the ethical values from the business. Non-standardization as to quality, adulteration, imitation, giving false impression and so on have led to the customer exploitation beyond the limits resulting in socio-economic pollution of minds and relations. 4) Political Forces: Marketing environment is the brace of political framework in which the government of the Nation woks. It is the government that regulates the business activities as it is the custodian of the nation. Whatever the marketer is to decide and act in the face of legal framework provided by the political party ruling the Nation. 5) Physical Forces: The physical factors here refer to the

7. 2) Firm’s employees like peers, subordinates, supervisors; 3) Customers; 4) Financial Institutions; and 5) Consultants. SPIRE Approach: Integrating environment forces into strategic decision through novel approach is called SPIRE (Systematic Probing and Identification of the Relevant Environment) approach. This was the essence of Klien and Newmans recommendations in, ‘How to integrate new environmental forces into strategic planning?’ According to authors this approach which may seem tedious at times reduces the risk of overlooking potentially important environmental factors. The probing and

9. and some environmental factors will influence all components. These clusters form the basis of forecasts as they are relevant environmental factors which need the attention of the marketer and other decision makers in the organization. The advantage of SPIRE approach is that it increases sensitivity of all decision makers, helps in generating creative ideas, forecasts can be used in actual decision making and a framework is established for rapid assimilation of unexpected environmental changes. Scenario Building: Another approach to environmental scanning is called scenario building. This is a process involving the decision

10. decision maker who has to analyse his decisions relating to the future. Following steps are involved in this technique: Stage 1: Analysis of the Decision: Stage 2: Identification of the key decision factors: Stage 3: Keying in societal factors: Stage 4: Analysis of each key variables separately: Stage 5: Selection of scenario logistics: Stage 6: Elaborating Scenarios:

15. groups designated by 3 digits code (number 251 is household furniture and 252 is office furniture). c) Each industry is further subdivided into approx. 450 product categories designated by 4 digits code (number 2521 is wooden office furniture and number 2522 is metal office furniture). For each 4 digit SIC number the census of manufacturers provides the number of establishments sub classified by location, number of employees, annual sales, and networth. 2) Multiple Factor Index Method:

21. 2) Operating Variables: a) Technology : What customer technology should we focus on. b) User or Nonuser status : Should we serve heavy users, medium users, light users, or nonusers? c) Customer Capabilities: Should we serve customers needing many or few services? 3) Purchasing Approaches: a) Purchasing-function Organization : Should we serve companies with highly centralized or decentralized purchasing functions? b) Power Structure : Should we serve companies that are engineering dominated, financially dominated, and so on? c) Nature of existing relationships : Should we serve companies with which we have strong relationships or simply go after most desirable companies?

22. d) General Purchase Policies: Should we serve companies that prefer leasing? Service contracts? Systems purchase? Sealed bidding? e) Purchasing Criteria: Should we serve companies that are seeking quality? Service? Price? 4) Situation Factors: a) Urgency: Should we serve companies that need quick and sudden delivery and changes? b) Specific Application: Should we focus on special applications of our product rather than all applications? c) Size of Order: Should we focus on large or small orders? 5) Personal Characteristics: a) Buyer-Seller Similarity: Should we serve companies whose people and values are similar to ours? b) Attitudes towards risk: Should we serve risk-taking or risk-avoiding customers?

24. Marketing mix The Marketing mix is generally accepted as the use and specification of the "four P's" describing the strategic position of a product in the marketplace. One version of the marketing mix originated in 1948 when James Culliton said that a marketing decision should be a result of something similar to a recipe. This version was used in 1953 when Neil Borden, in his American Marketing Association presidential address, took the recipe idea one step further and coined the term "Marketing-Mix". A prominent marketer, E. Jerome McCarthy, proposed a 4 P classification in 1960, which has seen wide use. A "Marketing Mix" is the set of controllable, tactical marketing tools that work together to achieve company's objectives, they are: product, price, promotion and place . Although some marketers have added other P's, such as people, process and physical evidence by Magrath for service-based industries, public relations and political power by Kotler, and packaging by YS Chin, the fundamentals of marketing typically identifies the four P's of the marketing mix as referring to:

25. Product - A tangible object or an intangible service that is mass produced or manufactured on a large scale with a specific volume of units. Intangible products are often service based like the tourism industry & the hotel industry. Typical examples of a mass produced tangible object are the motor car and the disposable razor. A less obvious but ubiquitous mass produced service is a computer operating system. Price – The price is the amount a customer pays for the product. It is determined by a number of factors including market share, competition, material costs, product identity and the customer's perceived value of the product. The business may increase or decrease the price of product if other stores have the same product. Place – Place represents the location where a product can be purchased. It is often referred to as the distribution channel. It can include any physical store as well as virtual stores on the Internet.

26. Promotion – Promotion represents all of the communications that a marketer may use in the marketplace. Promotion has four distinct elements - advertising, public relations, word of mouth and point of sale. A certain amount of crossover occurs when promotion uses the four principal elements together, which is common in film promotion. Advertising covers any communication that is paid for, from and cinema commercials, radio and Internet advertisements, through print media and billboards. The term "Marketing Mix" however, does not imply that the 4P elements represent options. They are not trade-offs but are fundamental marketing issues that always need to be addressed. They are the fundamental actions that marketing requires whether determined explicitly or by default.

28. The service marketing mix comprises of the 7’p’s. These include the above 4 P’s of marketing mix and the following 3P’s: People : An essential ingredient to any service provision is the use of appropriate staff and people. Recruiting the right staff and training them appropriately in the delivery of their service is essential if the organisation wants to obtain a form of competitive advantage Process : Refers to the systems used to assist the organisation in delivering the service. Physical evidence : Where is the service being delivered? Physical Evidence is the element of the service mix which allows the consumer again to make judgments about the organisation. Physical evidence is an essential ingredient of the service mix, consumers will make perceptions based on their sight of the service provision which will have an impact on the organisations perceptual plan of the service.

29. The Service marketing mix involves analysing the 7’p of marketing involving, Product, Price, Place, Promotion, Physical Evidence, Process and People. To certain extent managing services are more complicated then managing products, products can be standardised, to standardise a service is far more difficult as there are more input factors i.e. people, physical evidence, process to manage then with a product

32. 3) Smoothens the operation: A system smoothens the operations in gathering, processing, and transmitting the data; it also works out patterns from out of the available information. 4) Tailors information outputs to suit needs of executives: Executives at different levels may need only particular segments of the marketing information output, depending on the decisions they are called upon to make. Organizing information into a system helps meet all such requirements. 5) Helps using same information several times, and for different purposes: A system framework facilitates repetitive use of the same information by different departments/executives at different times and for different purposes. A system framework is essential for this purpose. 6) Helps sort out conflicting information: Quite often, a firm receives conflicting information on inputs on a given subject. A system framework helps quick scanning of such information

33. inputs and cross checking one with the other. 7) Integrates all information: Integration of information is perhaps the most important benefit of a system framework. A system helps instant access to company-wide data by integrating all data into a unified entity. 8) Converts data into information and information into insights; in particular, creates customer insights out of transaction data: 9) Serves as knowledge-management mechanism: A system converts raw data into information and information into knowledge; supports capture of knowledge; serves as a mechanism to manage it; makes the knowledge flow where it is required; and ensures that it is available in a readily usable form. In short, an MIS will serve as a total knowledge management mechanism.

37. 4) Must be user oriented and user friendly; must also secure users involvement. 5) Must involve the suppliers of the information as well. 6) Must be economical. 7) Must meet the principle of selectivity. 8) Must be capable of smoothly absorbing changes that may become necessary. 9) Must be fast.

41. They also provide the RFM (Regency, Frequency, and Monetary) formula which in turn helps the firm to arrive at a customer index that shows which customers are more profitable for the firm. III) Marketing Intelligence: Marketing intelligence is different from regular marketing information or marketing research data. It may form a part of the MIS but it is special in the sense that it gives strategic information and it is quite often related to competitors activities. Broadly marketing intelligence furnishes information on changes in market conditions, changes in customer requirements, emerging strategies of competitors, and emerging opportunities in the business. IV) Data Warehousing: Today organizations collect data or information faster than they can apply it. They need to warehouse it and apply it whenever needed. In fact, they apply it repeatedly for multiple purposes.

44. research centres not around a specific marketing problem but is an attempt to continuously monitor the marketing environment. 3) Marketing intelligence system: A marketing intelligence system is a set of procedures and data sources used by marketing managers to shift information from the environment that they can use in their decision-making . 4) Marketing models : Within the MIS there has to be the means of interpreting information in order to give direction to decision. These models may or may not be computerised. Some typical tools are: · Time series sales model · Brand switching model · Linear programming · Elasticity models (price, incomes, demand, supply, etc.)

45. · Regression and correlation model · Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) model · Sensitivity analysis · Discounted cash flow · Spreadsheet ‘what if model’. Following Figure illustrates the major components of an MIS, the environmental factors monitored by the system and the types of marketing decision which the MIS seeks to consider.

46. The marketing information systems and its subsystems :