Today there are many techniques that allow to plan the marketing strategy of the enterprise, both in entering new markets and the expansion of its production.One of the most important components of any marketing research is a STEP-analysis, due to which collected information on the main environmental factors that have a direct impact on the population, their preferences and capabilities of the business.
STEP-analysis of a company it is extremely necessary, because without the external environment to talk about the objectivity of research of the market of goods and services is simply meaningless.That is why for many years the leading Western marketers and identified this analysis as an important factor when taking into account the general orientation of the enterprise.The name of this analysis comes from the acronym STEP, or rather from the first capital letters that signify the following environmental factors:
- Social Socially relevant factors;
- Technological technologically relevant factors;
- Economical economically relevant factors;
- Political Politically significant factors.
is important to understand that the STEP-analysis not only takes into account external factors, but also makes them stand out in the category of areas on which the company can not influence.They should be mandatory to take into account and exploit.As an example, a situation in which the company was McDonalds at the opening of its first representative office in Moscow.Then the vast majority of people though have heard of this network of eateries around the world, however, we have never seen anything like it.That's why on the first day of opening there was great excitement and at McDonalds for the first time in its history there was a huge queue.This situation is clearly characterized by the fact that the company has not fully taken into account the factors of social and political dimension, as in the post-opening of the first American diner looked like a real holiday.In general, this boom went only for the benefit of the company, however, has forced marketolgov take responsibility for the further planning of its strategy to continue to avoid long queues.
STEP-analysis allows a number of advantages, thanks to which the company can compete effectively and maintain trade and economic activity.So, here are these benefits:
- when working with STEP-factors, such as the head, and his subordinates begin to not only talk about the external environment, but also gradually start to think about it;
- brought up the collective culture account various factors of the external environment, which could result in the vision of the external environment and macro factors;
- as a result of external factors studying marketing analyst builds a holistic picture of their perception;
- in the process of reflection on the external environment for a long period of time at the company's employees to develop resistance to external factors wont pay much more attention than the internal points.
Conduct STEP-analysis is quite simple, however, the main thing in this case is to work out the right approach to a common analysis of the external environment.With a systematic approach, the employees of the marketing department to develop a common vision of the future of the enterprise and the assessment of its performance in terms of achieving results possible.STEP-analysis on the example of the enterprise allows to identify the strengths and weaknesses of impacts, using which you can plan your tactical and strategic actions in the near and distant future of the company.This explains the great popularity of STEP-analysis in modern companies.
