The Influence of the Level of Environmental Complexity and Turbulence on the Choice of Marketing Tactics

This paper proposes that the choice of marketing tactics is influenced by the company’s external environment. It aims to illustrate the marketing tactics suggested for a complex, turbulent environment, when marketing and the environment are viewed through a complexity lens. A quantitative, descriptive, cross sectional study was used, based on an e-mailed survey to a purchased mailing list, which resulted in a sample of 860 senior marketing or sales managers in medium to large profit oriented businesses in South Africa. The study found that the manager’s evaluation of the environment as complex/turbulent was important, and that there is a relationship between the use of destabilizing marketing tactics and complex/turbulent environments. Although there is only a limited relationship with ‘success’, the study generally stresses the importance of destabilizing tactics, and in fact, all marketing tactics, in a complex/turbulent environment. Most work on complexity in marketing has concentrated on strategy, with little emphasis on tactics and the marketing mix. Therefore, this paper is an important contribution to the understanding of marketing mix choices, of interest to both practicing marketers and marketing academics.