The marketing environments fall under two catagories. The macro-proximate environment and the macro-widened environment.Micro-widened environment include those factors that can vary from day to day and which the firm has no direct power in changing its fators, such as demographic factors, legal factors, technological factors, political factors and several others. Micro-proximate environment denotes those elements over which the marketing firm has control or which it can use in order to gain information that will better help it in its marketing operations. This includes several factors that will be further-on discussed. These factors are, competitors, custumers, suppliers, intermediaries and micro-environment publics.
An organistion rarely stands alone in its effort too serve a given market. Its efforts to build an efficient task-marketing system to serve the market are matched by similar efforts on the part of others. The organisation, in fact, operates within a rich environment of competitors. These competitors need to be identified, monitored and outmaneuvered to gain and mantain the loyalty of the market. The competitive environment consists not only of other companies but also of more basic things. The best way for a company to grasp its competition is to take the point of view of the buyer. In early days of the internet, many retailers did not recognise that online retailing represents competition. Now, many bricks-and-mortar retailers have their own websites so that customers can order directly. Although internet is a huge threat it is unlikely to replace bricks-and-mortar. Competitors may therefore be either firms supplying similar products or firms competing