Question

One element of marketing strategy selection and design is that strategy must account for environmental change. Of the six firms, IKEA, Swatch, Barilla, Kingsford Charcoal, Burberry, and Culinarian. Which firm faced the highest level of environmental uncertainty; which faced the lowest level of environmental uncertainty? Compare and contrast these two environments and discuss (in general) the strategic options available to the firms from a marketing perspective.

Answer 1

Environmental change in marketing strategy is the aspect of change in the market when customer demand more. It changes according to the needs and requirement of the customer. Among the given company I think it is more for Ikea and less for Kingsford Charcoal. If we compare the industry and environment where these two companies exist, Ikea is placed in such an environment where tastes, preferences and needs of customer change quickly. It designs and sells furniture, home appliances, home services. We know that in this segment customers are choosier, and their demand differ according to the trend in the market. In this way people do not need any such change in charcoal. It is a kind of static good where people look for quality only. It does not have any other component which people can looked into. No such change of strategy is required from Kingsford Charcoal and it should try to position itself in better way in the market. For Ikea I would suggest to invest heavily in data analytics, bigdata, machine learning, predictive modelling to know how tastes and preferences of people are changing and how it can remain relevant by offering trendy products and services to the customers.