Over many years of reading market analysis from thousands of reports, it appears that the same issues pop-up again and again. Therefore, it is worth discussing few key and small elements that will help deliver high quality analysis of the marketing external environment.
First, any marketing external environment should start with defining the scope of the research. Both from a geographical and from market/industry perspectives.
Starting with the geographical perspective, it is worth mentioning that a marketing environment analysis can be done at several level: eg., Global, continent, country, state, county, city and even district. When the geographic scope is defined, the research should only focus on the specified region. In the case where several regions are considered for example several countries, the external environment should be done for each country separately. The market and industry scope is even more essential, because the information provided should only focus on and be relevant for the targeted market/industry.
Second, the external environment should always be done by considering the trend analysis for each information provided mostly because there is no such thing as a static environment. The environment is always changing and today it is changing very fast.
Third, it is important to always have a critical view of the provided information to ask oneself if we are dealing with an opportunity or a threat. Fourth, after providing a good assessment of the environment it is important to evaluate and to prioritize all of the available information to further proceed with the more impactful ones
