Environmental Analysis

Environmental scanning is a strategy that the companies need to use in order to analyze new opportunities and changes. The information sources of environmental analysis data allow the companies to anticipate to events and plan for the future and anticipate changes. Comcast needs to understand the three main external environment components comprised of the remote , industry and the operating environment. The remote environment is made of external factors where these factors have a lot of control over the cable industry but where the company has little control over them. The factors can be macroeconomic variables including GDP, unemployment, inflation , interest rates. The industry environment component allows Comcast to analyze the growth in the industry’s sales during a period, the demand of the industry’s products , stage of development of the industry’s producst and the operating environments will permit to evaluate variables such as competitor’s prices, customer’s demands , preferences, buying habits, the company’s management capabilities, and availability of workforce
Telecommunication industry – Cable Companies
Comcast is one of the largest cable company in the USA . The main three segments include cable, programming and corporate. Comcast’s cable segment manages and operates broadcast cable systems which include video on demand, high definition television (HDTV), digital video recorder (DVR), premium channel programming and pay-per view programming. The cable segment covers around 45.7 million homes in the US. The company recorded revenues of $24,966 million during the fiscal year ended December 2006, an increase of 18.5% over 2005 . Out of the total revenue of the company, the cable division recorded revenues of $24,100 million, which there is an increase of 20.6% over 2005 (DataMonitor, 2007).

Macroeconomic variables that affect cable’s industry The cable industry can be analyzed in terms of the growth in real output and prices. The

References: Bureau of Economic Analysis (2007), Retrieved August 26, 2007 from http://www.bea.gov/scb/pdf/2006/08August/0806_NIPA-Tables-Account-06.pdf Countrywatch (2007),Retrieved August 26, 2007 from the University of Phoenix rEsource database Countrywatch, United States MarketLine Business Information Center, Retrieved August 26, 2007 from the University of of Phoenix rEsource database Market Line Business information Center, United States