Environmental Scanning Techniques - Business Environment Video Lecture | Business Environment - B Com

hello my name is Kim Makran and I'm
going to spend a few minutes today
speaking with you about environmental
scanning and how it relates to
environmental marketing environmental
scanning is the search for understanding
and opportunity and with this
presentation I hope you will gain a
better understanding of what
environmental scanning is the purpose of
it and the various monitoring and
scanning techniques large and small
companies utilize okay the definition of
environmental scanning is environmental
scanning is a process that
systematically surveys and interprets
relevant data to identify external
opportunities and threats an
organization gathers information about
the external world its competitors and
itself okay we're going to start there's
there are three main purposes for
environmental scanning and the first one
is it helps the company learn about
market trends and it does this by
research and data both primary and
secondary that one receives from
demographics technological advances the
politics and legal aspects of business
and the market in the industry social
implications such as social media and
and then the economic climate for a
particular industry or a new type of
product that hits the market and moving
right along
another very important purpose and
environmental scanning is the company
needs to learn as much information as is
possible about the customer we want to
find out what what the customer behavior
is and their preferences we want
learn the specifics about what the
customer wants to buy one of you say a
market approach okay and we will find it
for this information out in a variety of
ways one of the more costly ways is to
use a focus group or an extensive survey
or personal interviews there are other
methods in which marketing executives
may actually just get out and walk
around let's say in New York or in in
any town for that matter and actually go
out and speak with customers show
potential products and ask you know
about different products on the market
and what types of things they think
would be a great fit for their
particular needs okay and and the third
a most important purpose of
environmental scanning is this
information is then used to be used to
craft execute and monitor a strategic
marketing plan okay and there are a
several environmental scanning and
monitoring techniques but these are the
four we're going to concentrate on
they're the four that are used more
predominantly in the business realm and
in the new entrepreneurs okay and those
are pest
SWOT the SWOT analysis the industry
analysis and a competitor analysis okay
and we're going to go I'm going to go
over each of these different techniques
and give you just a little bit of
information about each of them the first
one is an acronym acronym pest
okay the P stands for the political and
legal aspects of business and if you I'm
sure before I Facebook hit the market
they were double-checking with the labor
laws and making sure that political
stability exists in the global areas
that they are and currently in or hope
to be in in the future okay and the e
stands for economic growth and if a
company wants to go global they
obviously need to
need to check the exchange rates and for
the particular area there plenty on
going into as far as the s that stands
for social and and so this would deal
with a population growth rate and I also
notice that age distribution is
mentioned under that category
I know demographics are often used as a
technique one of the techniques to get
more the company to get to know the
potential target market or customer base
so it's kind a this this particular
technique combines social and the
demographics okay and then T stands for
technology with any new product research
and development activity is incredibly
important and as far as producing an
actual product on a on a product line we
want to use a lot of the companies now
obviously use automation there are some
exceptions to that and we want to check
on technological changes over time okay
as for the SWOT analysis and this is a
method that is commonly used by
entrepreneurs and business and business
management okay and there's four main
categories their strengths opportunities
weaknesses and threats on the left hand
side the strictness strengths and
weaknesses excuse me deal with the
internal workings of an organization and
the opportunities and threats still with
the external aspect aspects of business
these are more difficult to control and
but it's very important for a business
to know what the competition is doing so
we all as a business we want to
capitalize on our strengths which are
our capabilities and resources we want
to try to use those to our greatest
advantage okay and then our weaknesses
and we want to minimize these as much as
we can and some of those weak areas we
could improve upon and eventually those
could lead to future opportunities okay
and then as far as your opportunities
those are the investment
and then threats we want to identify
those as our competition and industry
changes to name a few this is not an
exhaustive list this is just a tract
this is just a way for me to try to give
you an example of what what types of
things a business would want to learn
about in order to provide a quality
product that the customer wants with all
of this the customer it needs to be the
center of everything we do with
marketing with respect to
entrepreneurial ventures okay
and obviously one of the main purposes
at the SWOT analysis is to gain insight
about a company's current situation if
we know where we are currently then we
can make adjustments to get to new
locate you know to add new product lines
or to move our our company globally or
to new locations within a state
depending on what the size and scope of
our businesses okay and as for
additional information about the
strengths and weaknesses customer
feedback and employee information lead a
company to learn more about their
capabilities and resources so we can do
this by speaking with the customer you
know a surveyor you know we've mentioned
focus groups that's not an exhaustive
list but those are some of the ways we
can find out a little bit more about
what the customer is needing or wanting
and employee information that takes that
will help us to improve upon our
capabilities as a business if we can
produce a product in half the time then
we have a better opportunity to serve
our customer and to increase our
bottom-line okay internal information is
beneficial in helping a company set
goals and objectives and once again to
craft and execute and evaluate marketing
strategies okay and then the external
information a lot of the information we
will look at or the company will look at
is the secondary data sources and this
gives
company valuable insight about what's
happening outside of the company and
like I mentioned previously a company is
not able to control a lot of the
external environment but they can impact
it obviously the larger the company a
lot of times there's more of an impact
and but it that's not necessarily true
with our technological age of the
internet with the Internet okay and then
industry and competitive information is
used to identify possible threats and
opportunities hey hey and that's for
industry analysis and competitor
competitive tort analysis I want to know
why name trouble second competitor by
reviewing a fortune 500 and the fortune
500 listings and the Inc listings or
ratings and social media trade
publications and financial reports a
company can gain insight as to the
environmental what's going on in the
environment okay and one of the main
reasons we will go through the trouble
and the expense of you know in the
environmental scanning process is to
collect information both primary and
secondary to lead us to the strategic
planning we want to be able to plan a
marketing strategy that fits with our
particular target markets so we need to
make sure that we have the correct and
most up-to-date information in order to
do that and this is an example of you
know of how it works we have an
environmental scan you know this is an
ongoing process and businesses continue
to do this daily or it should be daily
to determine the strengths weaknesses
opportunities and threats and then they
want to see where we're at to see where
we're going to go and then make a plan
accordingly okay some companies have our
great at gathering data and information
and then they fail to use it well
obviously that's not going to do
a lot of good for the company if we
gather great data and no one looks at it
or it sits on a shelf then obviously
that's not helping the company or the
customer for that matter
hey and here are a few companies and I
want you to take a second look at it at
these particular companies and what do
you think these companies have in common
okay
well all of these companies I would
venture to say have a great
environmental scanning organ they do
this on a daily basis they use their
data management properly and they use
this technology to monitor the
competition and what's going on in the
marketplace very well okay so they
haven't they use environmental scanning
in in a great way that's productive
these companies are very customer
focused they constantly innovate they're
technologically centered and they are
known for their excellent advertising
and social media campaigns okay to sum
it all up the purpose of environmental
scanning and is to help a company learn
about market trends learn about customer
behavior and preferences and to use this
information to craft a strategic
marketing plan and then to monitor that
plan over time as well okay and some of
the techniques that we just that were
discussed were pest the SWOT analysis
industry analysis and competitor an app
competitor analysis okay and that's
basically it if you have any questions
feel free to post those on d2l thank you