Market environment and business environment are marketing terms that refer to factors and forces that affect a firm's ability to build and maintain successful customer relationships. The business environment has been defined as "the totality of physical and social factors that are taken directly into consideration in the decision-making behaviour of individuals in the organisation."
The three levels of the environment are as follows:
Internal environment – the internal elements of the organisation used to create, communicate and deliver market offerings. External micro environment – Local forces that affect its ability to serve its customers. External macro environment – larger societal forces that affect the survival of the organisation, including the demographic environment, the political environment, the cultural environment, the natural environment, the technological environment and the economic environment. The analysis of the macro marketing environment is to better understand the environment, adapt to the social environment and change, so as to achieve the purpose of enterprise marketing.
Internal environment
The internal environment "consists of those relevant physical and social factors within the boundaries of the organization or specific decision unit that are taken directly into consideration in the decision-making behavior of individuals in that system". This includes all departments such as management, finance, research and development, purchasing, Business operations and accounting. Each of these departments influences marketing decisions. For example, research and development have input as to the features a product can perform and accounting approves the financial side of marketing plans and budget in customer dissatisfaction. Marketing managers must watch supply availability and other trends dealing with suppliers to ensure that product will be delivered to customers in the time frame required in order to maintain a strong customer relationship. These internal factors can be controlled by the organization to a certain extent. Internal environmental factors are in control of business organization.
External environment
The external environment "consists of those relevant physical and social factors outside the boundaries of the organization or specific decision unit that are taken directly into consideration." The external environment can be further broken into micro and macro environments.
Micro environment
The micro-environment consists of customers, partners, and competitors. The most important aspect of micro-environment is the customer market. There are different types of customer markets include consumer markets, business markets, government markets, globalization international markets, and reseller markets. The consumer market is made up of individuals who buy goods and services for their own personal use or use in their household. Business markets include those that buy goods and services for use in producing their own products to sell. This is different from the reseller market which includes non-business activities that purchase goods to resell as is for a profit. These are the same companies mentioned as market intermediaries. The government market consists of government agencies that buy goods to produce public services or transfer goods to others who need them. International markets include buyers in other countries and includes customers from the previous categories.
Partners include marketing intermediaries, financiers, and advertising agencies. Marketing intermediaries refers to resellers, physical distribution firms, marketing services agencies, and financial intermediaries. These are the people that help the company promote, sell, and distribute its products to final buyers. Resellers are those that hold and sell the company's product. They match the distribution to the customers and include places such as Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy. Physical distribution firms are places such as warehouses that store and transport the company's product from its origin to its destination. Marketing services agencies are companies that offer services such as conducting marketing research, advertising, and consulting. Financial intermediaries are institutions such as banks, credit companies and insurance companies.
Competitors are also a factor in the micro-environment and include companies with similar offerings for goods and services. To remain competitive a company must consider who their biggest competitors are while considering its own size and position in the industry. The company should develop a strategic advantage over their competitors.