Making any marketing decision is based on the proper assessment of dynamic processes, as any business operates in a constantly changing economic environment. Completing an environmental scan is a common strategy for making vital marketing decisions. In general terms, it comes down to the assessment of external marketing environment so that the main opportunities and threats could be identified along with the most critical challenges based on the trends in the economic environment (Morrison, 2013).
The environmental scan is based on the analysis of several vital forces including any major social and technological changes, political development, and, most importantly, the current state of economy. Regardless of being a time- and effort-consuming process, environmental scan is a valuable instrument for determining whether the business strategy used by the organization is consistent with its environment and vision and could help achieve its objectives (Kolb, 2015). For this reason, the current state of the economy can affect the outcomes of the environmental scan in two main ways that will be described in detail further in the paper.
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"Environmental Scan".
To begin with, it is essential to understand what makes up the concept of the current state of economy. In general, it stands for the major economic trends including the economic outcomes of main competitors as well as the overall level of incomes in target consumers. These two factors have a direct impact on the company’s further marketing effort, as they predetermine whether strategic objectives could be achieved.
The first factor explaining the connection between environmental scan and the current state of economy is that this marketing process is based not only on the assessment of the company’s external environment but also forecasting how it would develop in the future so that proper decisions could be made and strategies could be developed (Kolb, 2015). Here, the focus is made on analyzing the current trends in economy and correlating them with the past ones in order to make forecasts and drive the planning process. However, in this instance, it is important to assure that a marketer is objective in estimating the current state of economy to make effective decisions that would help the company properly react to any changes and developments. Therefore, one way in which it could affect completing environmental scan is by influencing the outcomes of the marketing process.
One more point of connection existing between completing environmental scan and the current state of economy derives from the fact that the marketing tool is based on collecting information from a variety of sources. This one is needed in order to generate a proper foundation for any further assessments and forecasts. In this case, it is imperative to focus on different sources of information in order to not only estimate the current state of economy but also understand how consumers react to it so that the company responds in an appropriate manner. Based on it, another way the current state of economy might affect the completion of environmental scan is by influencing the effectiveness of the process and its potential for improving company’s economic outcomes.
Summing up, the current state of economy is the most critical force affecting the outcomes of environmental scan. It can be explained by the dynamism of business environment that derives from the dynamism of the economic development. Based on what has been mentioned in the paper, the connection between this marketing instrument and the state of economy can be traced in some primary areas – performance of competitors, consumer incomes, and the perception of the current state of economy by both the consumers and marketers. All of them affect the quality and comprehensiveness of the scan as well as the ability to complete it.
