The macro-environment entails six various factors. The factors are social-cultural forces, ecological forces, political forces, economic forces, technological forces, and demographic forces (de Sousa & Castaeda-Ayarza, 2022). Every firm has to take all the factors into account when creating strategic plans to ensure their competitiveness in the markets. This is because even though a firm can be affected by environmental fluctuations, the factors can impact the environment independently or all by themselves. Economic forces are related to the factors that can impact the patterns of spending as well as the behavior or purchasing power of consumers. Some of the economic forces that have impacted me at my present firm include the high rate of unemployment that happened during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 and 2020 and the years after. Trends in employment are essential indicators when looking into the progress of an economy. When the rate of unemployment is high, it can easily be deduced that economic conditions are getting worse as people are losing their employment. In addition, it has been noted that it has been a challenge to create a new job. At the end of the day, this trend results in a reduction in demand for e-commerce commodities.

Another factor that played a lot during the pandemic in the macro environment is political forces. The political environment is one of the least predictable factors in the business environment. Just like any other firm, my company was not ready for the government intervention that entailed the closure of non-essential e-commerce markets (Columbus, 2020). As a result, my firm struggled to adapt new strategies for its survival. Unfortunately, the firm was limited in one way or another by the political environment such as the law and regulations that highly restricted it from undertaking different activities such as physical contact with customers at the stores, thereby limiting its success. The political and economic forces during the pandemic saw my firm lay off eight percent of its employees. This is because it could not cater to their salaries due to the reduction of revenue caused by the closure of some stores and the significant reduction in sales since the spending of consumers had decreased considerably. As a way of adapting to the fluctuating environment, the firm shifted its strategies to operating solely on e-commerce.

1. The topic of your discussion response should be your classmate posting and should be written as if you were reviewing her posting in an academic journal. Your discussion . response should, therefore, answer the following questions as applicable:
   1. Were your classmate arguments articulate and logical? Were the facts correct?
   2. Was the interpretation your classmate provided reasonable and consistent with experts in the field? Was your classmate consistent with both the substance and intent of his/her references?
2. The focus for your critical analysis is not whether or not you agree with your classmate, but how well his position was presented.