A business’ environment is defined by a range of factors that can significantly affect the company and include pricing, social shifts and regulatory changes. The interplay of these factors can have either a positive or negative impact on a business. If you want to understand these factors and leverage them for your own benefit and career advancement, it is important to recognise the impact they can have on your company’s success or failure. This course demonstrates how business environments can impact businesses and explains how to create a favourable environment that promotes growth. We begin by analysing the types of business environments and tracing their impact on organisations.

The course then shows you how important customers and competitors are to businesses and provides a toolkit you can use to examine the key areas of the environment in which your business operates. A ‘crisis’ is a period of difficulty, danger, uncertainty and even suffering but is also a time for critical decision-making that can significantly affect a business. We examine the effects of crises and the three threats that they can pose. The course explores the concept of crisis management and lays out its three phases to show you how to build an effective crisis management team. Change is an inevitable and ongoing process and environments can undergo positive or negative shifts. We discuss change management principles to demonstrate how to minimise the negative changes that can occur in business environments.

We describe the objectives and functions of marketing and explain the distinction between ‘marketing’ and ‘selling’ before laying out the 7Ps and 4Cs of the ‘marketing mix’. We break down each step of the marketing process and show you how to write a marketing plan. Finally, the course discusses the importance of marketing information systems, the concept of organisational ethics and more. Properly analysing business environments allows you to establish your business in one that encourages growth. This course has no prerequisites and is designed for anyone who wants to succeed in the field of commerce and suits entrepreneurs, business owners and marketing managers. Sign up to learn how to locate and create an environment for your business that encourages growth through adept application of business principles like market analysis, organisational ethics and crisis management.