What it shows
A PESTLE analysis: political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors around the organization that scans them when it plans.
The four solid boxes are the original PEST factors, usually credited to Francis Aguilar (1967). The two dashed boxes, legal and environmental, are the factors PESTLE adds. Each factor has one example for Northfield Coffee Roasters, a fictional specialty coffee roaster.
How to read it
The political and economic boxes both raise the cost of imported beans: import tariffs on green coffee, and a weaker currency.
Social and technological change opens doors. More people brew specialty coffee at home, and subscription software makes direct online sales easy.
Legal and environmental factors set the limits: food safety and labeling rules for packaged coffee, and drought and climate change cutting harvests in growing regions.
Every arrow points at the organization. These are conditions it responds to, not ones it controls.
The six factors
- Political: how government intervenes, through tax, trade, tariffs and stability.
- Economic: growth, exchange rates, inflation and interest rates.
- Social: culture, health consciousness, population growth and age distribution.
- Technological: R&D, automation and the rate of technological change.
- Legal (added in PESTLE): laws such as consumer, employment, and health and safety law.
- Environmental (added in PESTLE): ecological aspects such as weather and climate.
Ways to use it in teaching
Replace each orange example with one for an organization the class knows, then rank the six by how much each would change its plans.
Discuss where a factor belongs when it fits two boxes: a tariff is political, but its effect on prices is economic.
Ask which of the six would have changed their organization’s plans most in the last five years, and whether a list with no weights or time frame can say so.
Use the results as the external half of a SWOT. In the SWOT analysis example, home brewing (social here) returns as opportunity O1, and costlier beans (economic and environmental here) as threat T1. The technological box cuts both ways: the same software that helps Northfield sell online lets new small roasters do it too, which the SWOT lists as threat T2.
Sources
- Aguilar, F. J. (1967). Scanning the business environment. Macmillan.
- Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. (2025). PESTLE analysis [Factsheet]. https://www.cipd.org/uk/knowledge/factsheets/pestle-analysis-factsheet/
- PEST analysis. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved October 19, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEST_analysis
