STEP analysis and its importance in the development of the company

Today, there are a lot of methods in the world that allow to plan correctly the marketing strategy of an enterprise, both when entering new sales markets and when expanding its production. One of the most important components of any market research is the STEP analysis, which collects information about the main factors of the external environment that directly influence the population, its preferences and business opportunities.

STEP-analysis of the enterprise is extremely necessary for him, since it is senseless to talk about the objectivity of the market research of goods and services without taking into account the external environment. That is why many years ago, leading Western marketers and identified this analysis as an important factor when taking into account the overall direction of the development of the enterprise. The name of this analysis came from the English abbreviation STEP, or rather the first capital letters, which mean the following environmental factors :

• Social Socially significant factors;
• Technological Technically significant factors;
• Economic Economically significant factors;
• Political factors.

It is important to understand that the STEP-analysis not only allows to take into account external factors, but also allocates them to the category of such spheres that the firm can not influence. They should necessarily be taken into account and used for their own purposes. As an example, we can cite the situation in which McDonalds was at the time of the opening of its first office in Moscow. Then the vast majority of people, although they heard about this network of eateries around the world, however, never seen anything like it. That is why on the first day of the opening, there was a big stir, and in McDonalds for the first time in its history a huge queue arose. This situation is vividly characterized by the fact that the company did not fully take into account the social and political aspects, since in the post-Soviet space the opening of the first American diner looked like a real holiday. In general, such a boom went to the company only to the benefit, however, forced the marketers to take a more responsible approach to further planning their strategy in order to avoid further queues in the future.

STEP-analysis allows using a number of advantages, thanks to which the enterprise can successfully compete and conduct trade and economic activities. So, these are the advantages:

- when working with STEP-factors, both the leader and his subordinates begin to not only talk about the external environment, but also gradually start thinking about it;

- the collective cultivates a culture of accounting for various factors of the external environment, resulting in a vision of the external environment and macrofactors;

- as a result of the study of external factors, the marketer-analyst builds a picture of their holistic perception;

- in the process of reflecting on the external environment for a long period of time, employees of the company develop a stable habit of giving external factors much more attention than to internal moments.

STEP-analysis is simple enough, however, the main thing in this case is the development of a proper approach to general analysis of the external environment. With a systematic approach, employees of the marketing department develop a common vision of the enterprise's perspective and evaluate its activities in terms of achieving possible outcomes. STEP-analysis on the example of the enterprise makes it possible to identify strong and weak factors of influence, using which you can plan tactical and strategic actions for the near and long-term development of the company. This explains the great popularity of STEP-analysis in modern companies.