Something to put into the PEST section of your marketing plan

The PEST (political-economic-social-technological) section of the marketing plan is often filled with interesting but useless information. Producing it is an annual ritual that the marketing manager goes through before getting onto the interesting part of the plan about how to spend the company’s money. Cynical, maybe, but it is Friday.

In December 2002, the UK Government published a discussion document (Green Paper) about the way forward for the funding of pensions. Since then the ‘great and the good’ have met to debate the thing and add get their voices heard.

Reading the notes of one such meeting, organised by the International Longevity Centre and the UK Faculty and Institute of Actuaries. . I encountered some interesting comments..

Sheila McKechnie, ceo of the Consumers Association revealed that ‘Half the UK population can’t do percentages. The idea that people can calculate how much they need to save for their pensions, and that all we need to resolve this problem is education and information is absurd – just get real’ Well, this must be good news for the manufacturers of calculators! Seriously, if this is true, then the great bulk of the Financial Service Industry’s marketing communications material must be like reading Serbo-Croat for much of the UK’s populace.

Sheila McKechnie again, ‘We live in a 40-40-20 society. The 40% at the bottom of the pile are always going to be dependent on the state. The 20% at the top can probably always provide for themselves. The difficult group is the 40% in the middle’ Now this is an interesting bit of market segmentation.

The thing that surprised me the most was data from the EU showing the extent to which the countries of Europe will have to increase Government expenditure to pay for pensions. By 2050 the UK is forecast to be the only country to be spending less than in 2000 – amazing. Germany will be spending 5% more and Greece will spend nearly 13% more. All very interesting you might say, but this stuff is important. Those countries that have to spend more on pensions will be spending less on other things or increasing taxes. All of this has a significant effect on consumer demand.