Scanning the Environment

Scanning the Environment

When thinking about the demographic, socio-cultural trends and changes that businesses face today, we typically start with questions about age, sex, race, marital status, employment status, level of education and household size. These demographic topics help marketers with a starting point in determining their target group. Amazon Grocery and Aldi's are both food-related grocers, and their target group is roughly everyone from the age 16 and up. It can be easily determined that our children of age five are not going to do the grocery shopping for the home, right?

Socio-cultural trends and changes help to narrow the target group more directly. These trends will form how a company operates (Macro environmental forces, 2011). Socio-cultural factors such as customs, lifestyles, values and characteristics will forever change the way companies run their businesses.

Macro environmental factors are evaluated constantly so that companies can keep up with what their customers want, or to change the way the business is run to attract a different customer base. Through population changes, education levels, social responsibility, technological advancements, political and legal factors, economic factors, cultural differences and the way consumers view corporations itself, strategists have their work cut out for them.

Consumer spending has become quite different over the past 20 years with more frequent visits, and smaller purchases as they becoming more and more aware of how they are spending their money. Consumers are looking for everyday savings and looking for more non-traditional ways to save (Springer, 2010). A value shopper is more likely to stock up and will seek out better deals, being less picky about brand names, focusing more on price. Observers note that demographics hardly matter anymore, as the more important area of focus is the socio-cultural trend in today's technology (Springer, 2010).

Identification of Trends and Changes...