The Positive Impacts Of The Macro Environment Of IKEA

1. Macro environment analysis: the major externals which affect company’s decision making, marketing strategy and performance. It includes:

An organization’s macroenvironment consists of nonspecific aspects in the organization’s surrounding that have the potential to affect the organization’s strategies. Macroenvironmental variables include

The external environment affects a firm’s strategic actions. Essentially, if a company decision has created a disaster in the environment, they

Macro environment or macro forces consists of the larger societal factors that have the potential to affect an organization’s strategies. According to Phillip Kotler, these variables include demographic, economic, natural, technological, political, and cultural outside forces. (“Josbd”, n.d, para. 7)

Macro environment are the external and uncontrollable factors that influence an organization’s decision making and affects its performance and strategies.

For this assignment, I will be describing how political, legal and social factors are impacting upon the business activities of Wal-Mart and Tfl. For businesses, this is important because they need to know how these change such as political decisions made by the government or changes to the law or changes that take place in society over time is going to affect their business.

Social factors refer to the changes in the lifestyle, behavior, attitudes and tastes of different societies. Social factors may affect the two businesses in the following ways:

IKEA is a global furniture retailer, which is established on the concept of contributing wide range of well designed, functional, and low cost home furnishing products in 40 countries, with 330 stores and 154,000 workers (The IKEA concept, 2012). IKEA was founded in 1943 by Ingvar Kampar and has turned in an international furniture retailer that specialized in stylish but inexpensive furniture designs.

Identifying influencing factors of a company’s macro-environment helps in the strategic development and management within a company. The macro-environment outlines an industry and the competitive environment as seen in figure 3.1, (Gamble, Peteraf, Thompson, 39). Within the macro-environment there are the political factors, economic conditions, sociocultural forces, technological factors, environment forces, and legal/regulatory factors. All of these factors blanket the habitat an industry and its competition thrive in. Inside the industry and competitive environment there are five factors that influence an individual company. The five factors are suppliers, rival firms, new entrants, buyers, and substitute products. The biggest impact on a company are these five factors. For example, Under Armour focuses on their industry and competitive environment to survive and grow. Their strategy to win over the market share from Nike and Adidas consists of expanding a stable and original brand within record time, taking an innovative approach to their product line-up and brand-name appeal where the market seemed to be barren, and lastly, the company enters in the foreign market early on to establish its brand and influence markets outside of the US.

IKEA also based on low cost to achieve hybrid strategy. Big items are all flat-packed that the customers transported and assembled themselves. This saves IKEA with shipping costs from suppliers and delivery costs to customers so that they can pass this benefit to customers through low price. In the stores, there are no armies of sales staffs. Customers are providing with tape measures and pencils so that they can self-served. This reducing the number of sales staff required. IKEA encourages customers to create value for themselves by taking on certain tasks traditionally done by the retailers and their low expectation on service levels keeps costs down. Additionally, IKEA choose most economical suppliers over traditional suppliers around the world. The company buys great volume of materials from suppliers to get the economies of scale. Since the labour in UK is expensive, their products are produced in

The next one will be the economical environment. During the economic recession, most people don’t want to spend too much. Customers will think twice before they pay for the product. IKEA have the advantage that the price is very reasonable for the general public. They can

How can the environment influence the company? How can the current environment influence the company?

Macro environment consist of those major external and uncontrollable factors that influence an organization's decision making, and affect its performance and strategies.

An organization is an open system; therefore it interacts with its environment. To manage the relationship with the environment, a large part of strategic planning is concerned. The environmental factors can be divided to 2 main categories, which is MACRO and MICRO .Macro environmental factors seriously affect an organization business practice, profitability and future progress. It can

IKEA has adapted to the operations function of a business. This function is the main function of every company. This key function, of which IKEA has adapted to, is the business function responsible for managing the process of creation of goods and services. The operations function is responsible for organising, coordinating, planning, and controlling the resources that are required in the production of goods and services. IKEA has effectively implemented this function by understanding the needs of customers. In particular, this applies to those who have a lower income, and/or, limited space. IKEA’s employees within the product design and product development departments, focus directly on the price and quality, as well as the design and function of products. Elements of the design are typically agreed on within the factory itself, this is where manufacturers and designers work together, to create a product with regard to the greatest use of raw materials and manufacturing opportunities. IKEA’s operations have proved effective as in 2013 it earned $35.5 billion. IKEA has a large amount of suppliers, greater than 1300. IKEA purchases most of their