Market environment
Market environment and business environment are marketing terms that refer to factors and forces that affect a firm's ability to build and maintain successful customer relationships. The business environment has been defined as "the totality of physical and social factors that are taken directly into consideration in the decision-making behaviour of individuals in the organisation." The three levels of the environment are the internal micro environment – the internal elements of the organisation used to create, communicate and deliver market offerings; the external market environment – the external elements which affect the sourcing and distribution process of a product from the supplier to the final consumer; and the external macro environment – larger societal forces that affect the survival of the organisation, including the demographic environment, the political environment, the cultural environment, the natural environment, the technological environment, and the economic environment.