What are the macro environmental forces that influences purchasing?

The macro-environment consists of those external factors that the company is not in control of but impact on it, the opportunities and threats from the external environment; such as the political, economical, social, technological, environmental and legal factors. These factors have impacts on all marketing mixes as macro environmental forces are something that we, or the company cannot control, unlike the micro environmental forces such as customers, competitors, distributors, shareholders, directors, managers, banks, suppliers etc.

A good example would be the current economical issue that the world is facing now, especially the US. Given that the US is in a financial turmoil, the purchasing power of both companies and consumers are affected tremendously, such that no one would want to spend unnecessarily, but to save more money. This thus impacts on the economical factor of the country as their people are not spending, due to high inflation as well, hence the GDP of the country defluctuates and so does the exchange rate of the US dollar.