The Marketing Environment
This chapter reviews the marketing environment and outlines the aspects of the changing environmental trends that marketers must address when preparing a strategic marketing plan. Note the emphasis on the consumer and the need to uncover buying patterns and trends that may be affected by outside environmental forces and changes.
The Social and Cultural Environment
Generation Gaps
Clothiers who target teens and young adults (such as Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch) must estimate the size of both current and future audiences. So must companies that specialize in products aimed at customers in other age brackets - say, young children or retirees. Marketers pay particular attention to population shifts because they can have dramatic effects on a consumer base, either increasing or decreasing the number of potential customers.
Marketers tend to assign most Americans born in the last sixty years to one of three groups: the baby-boom generation (those born between 1946 and 1964), Generation X (1965 to 1975), and Generation Y - also known as "echo baby boomers" or "millenniums" (1976 to 2001). In addition to age, members of each group tend to share common experiences, values, and attitudes that stay with them as they mature. These values and attitudes have a profound effect on both the products they want and the marketing efforts designed to sell products to them. Let's look a little more closely at some of the defining characteristics of each group.