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40. Marketing Environment

 The marketing environment consists of the task environment and the broad environment. The task environment includes the actors engaged in producing, distributing, and promoting the offering. These are the company, suppliers, distributors, dealers, and target customers. 

In the supplier group are material suppliers and service suppliers, such as marketing research agencies, advertising agencies, banking and insurance companies, transportation companies, and telecommunications companies. 

Distributors and dealers include agents, brokers, manufacturer representatives, and others who facilitate finding and selling to customers.

The broad environment consists of six components: demographic environment, economic environment, social- cultural environment, natural environment, technological environment, and political-legal environment.

These environments contain forces that can have a major impact on the actors in the task environment, which is why smart marketers track environmental trends and changes closely.

Marketers must pay close attention to the trends and developments in these and adjust their marketing strategies as needed. New opportunities are constantly emerging that await the right marketing savvy and ingenuity. Consider Pinterest.

Pinterest: One of the fastest-growing social media sites ever–its surpassed 10 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in January 2012 and doubled that just four months later–Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool that lets users collect and share images of projects or products on digital scrapbooks or “pinboards.” Especially popular with women planning weddings, saving recipes, and designing kitchen upgrades, Pinterest has driven more traffic to websites in a month than Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube combined. Part of its appeal is its unique customizable grid of images. Pinterest’s sweet spot is that users are often in a shopping mindset; one study showed almost 70% of online purchasers who found a product via Pinterest went on to buy, compared to 40% for Facebook. Brands from Dell and Mercedes-Benz to Peanut Butter & Co. and Zombie SAK are integrating the site into their social media strategies. Nevertheless, Pinterest is still exploring how to best monetize its business venture.

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