A Little Marketing

The PESTLE (LESTEP, PEST, SLEPT whatever you prefer to call it) is a misused tool in marketing. To be precise, the mistake is to think that PESTLE is even a tool to begin with. Because many people (especially students) will thoroughly describe all of these factors, whether they are important or not. Don’t get me wrong, I do not think that PESTLE is useless, but a lot of time can be saved if people would stop taking it literally. For example: you sell kitchen appliances and your short term goal for this year is to sell 1500 products in November and December; normally there won’t be any ecological developments that will influence your strategic plan. (Keep in mind that we have a very short term goal.) So in this case, we can completely forget about the ecological part of the analysis. Now, if there are important ecological developments that might change the outcome of your strategy, then you most certainly should include them in your analysis. My point is that PESTLE is not a necessity, and it is certainly not fixed. So don’t waste the readers time with pointless information.

There are several ways to determine whether the information you’ve found is useful or not. One is by using common sense, but that only solves the obvious. When you’re in doubt, think about the problem definition and product market combination. If the information does not relate to any of the two, then you should probably let it go. In other words, you use the problem definition and product market combination in the filtering process.

By the end of the process, you will be left with information that is relevant to your strategic plan. And that is what you will use, so if political and economical factors are the only ones worth considering in forming your plan, then that’s all you’ll include in your analysis. However, you will usually end up with three or four factors that appear to be important.

To close, I’d like to, again, add that you should mention the organisation as little as possible in your external analysis (which the PESTLE is a part of). And that’s it. PESTLE can over complicate everything with irrelevant information. By using it selectively, your external analysis and overall plan will remain clear as day.