TABLE OF CONTENTS Companies operate within a complex and dynamic external environment. It is the task of marketing-orientated companies to link the resources of the organisation to the requirements of customers. This is done within the framework of opportunities and threats present in the external environment. Change is an unequivocal fact of life, and organisations have to adapt. Usually, change occurs very slowly, almost imperceptibly. At other times it occurs quickly, and although it is obvious to everybody at the time, it can be so rapid that organisations might find it difficult to react in time (e.g. the dot.com boom).
Charles Darwin, author of Origin of the Species (1859), put forward the theory that living organisms have been able to survive in a constantly changing and potentially hostile world, because of their ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions (see also Darwin, 1887). Companies operate in an ever-changing business environment. They too, in order to survive, need to take account of, and adapt to, changing economic and technological conditions. Change is inevitable and in a free enterprise system firms have to be free to use their judgement in order to adapt to the ever changing commercial environment which is the mark of a free society (see Friedman, 1962).
In Chapter 1, we discussed the importance of the customer at the core of the business philosophy we call marketing . Although a clear understanding of customer requirements is of supreme importance in putting such a business philosophy into practice, this alone is...
