Word of Mouth Advertising
When consumers engage in conversation about a marketer’s products.
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If you find something you don’t understand on the site and it’s not listed here, let us know so we can continue to build a resource that covers all aspects of the language that, at times, is very specific to our industry or indeed Jack in the box.
Strategic Market Planning
The planning process that yields decisions in how a business unit can best compete in the markets it elects to serve. The strategic plan is based upon the totality of the marketing process.
Strategic Marketing Management
The analysis strategy, implementation, and control of marketing activities in order to achieve organisation’s objectives.
Strategic Profit Model
Multiplies a company’s net profit margin by its rate of asset turnover to arrive at its return on assets and this figure is then multiplied by financial leverage to obtain return on equity.
Subculture
The segments within a culture that share distinguishing meanings, values, and patterns of behavior that differ from those of the overall culture.
Survey Method
A primary data collection method in which people are questioned directly by telephone, mail or personal interviews.
SWOT Analysis
Studying a firm’s performance trends, resources and capabilities to assess a firm’s strengths and weaknesses, explicitly stating a firm’s mission and objectives, and scanning the external environments to identify opportunities and threats.
Target Market
A portion of a total market, which consists of buyers with similar traits that the organisation wants to attract.
Target Market Identification
The process of using income, demographic, and lifestyle characteristics of a market and census information for small areas to identify the most favorable locations.
Target Model
A six step process used to select a target market: target a generic market; analyse benefits desired in the generic market; remove qualifying benefits; group remaining benefits into segments; enumerate customer characteristics of segments; and target a market segment for cultivation.
Task Force
A special group of people organised on a temporary basis to solve a particular problem.
Technology
The purposeful application of scientific knowledge; an environmental force that consists of inventions and innovations from applied scientific and engineering research.
Test Market
The introduction of a new product into a limited number of representative communities in order to assess potential product demand and the marketing mix.
Thumbnail
A rough sketch for a layout for a piece of print advertising.
Trade Name
The legal name of an organisation rather than a specific product (i.e. Firestone Tyre Company).
Value Analysis
The process of dividing a product into its most basic components and then identifying parts of the product that could be modified, substituted, or eliminated to reduce costs or increase product performance.
Variable Cost
Any costs that rise or fall in direct relation to changes in output level.
Vector Graphic
Artwork which is comprised of paths, which are defined by a start and end point.
Vertical Cooperative Advertising
Advertising for which a supplier (usually a manufacturer or wholesaler) picks up part or all of the cost of advertising.
Vertical Marketing System
A type of marketing channel that is professionally managed and centrally programmed networks that are pre-engineered to achieve significant operating economics and maximum market impact.
Wheel of Retailing
A theory of retail evolution in which retailers enter the market as low margin, low cost operators, meet with success and gradually upgrade their stores, resulting in higher prices, at which time new retailers enter the market with low margins and prices.
Sales Force Composite Forecast
Enlists the members of the sales force to forecast sales.
Sales Orientation
A company aggressively uses promotional tools, such as advertising and salespeople, to convince the customer to purchase the firm’s product(s).
Sales Performance Analysis
The process of analysing actual sales data and comparing them with planned or budgeted sales to determine strengths and potential problem areas in the organisation.
Sales Promotion
Any promotional activity – other than personal selling, advertising and publicity – that stimulates consumer purchasing and dealer effectiveness.
Sample
The selection of a subset of elements from a larger group of objects.
Sample Survey
A cross sectional study in which the sample is selected to be representative of the target population and in which the emphasis is on the generation of summary statistics such as averages and percentages.
Scrambled Merchandising
Handling merchandise lines based solely on the profitability and without regard to the consistency of the merchandise mix. This results in unrelated lines of merchandise being carried by a single retailer (i.e gas and milk).
Service(s)
Products such as a bank loan or home security or library loans, that are intangible or at least substantially so.
Shopping Product
A product that is purchased after the consumer shops around to find the best deal based on comparisons of price, quality, style, durability and other product attributes that are felt to be important.
Situation Analysis
A stage of the marketing research process in which an investigation of the factors internal and external to the firm that potentially relate to the problem area is performed.
Skimming Price Strategy
A price strategy that involves setting prices high at the introduction stage of the product life cycle and then lowering prices in later stages.
Slogan
The verbal or written portion of an advertising message that summarises the main idea in a few memorable words – also known as a tag line.
Social Indicator
The data and information that facilitate the evaluation of how well a society or institution is doin
Social Marketing
The design, implementation and control of programs seeking to increase the acceptability of a social idea or cause in a target group.
Specialty Advertising
The placement of advertising messages on a wide variety of items of interest to the target markets such as calendars, coffee cups, pens, hats, note paper, t-shirts, etc.
Specialty Product
A product that the consumer desires and is willing to make a special effort to find and purchase, sometimes travelling long distances.
Stakeholder
One of a group of publics with which a company must be concerned.
Stimulus
The first component of the learning process, often called the cue; any object or phenomenon in the environment that is capable of eliciting a response.
Strategic Business Units (SBU’s)
Profit centres in an organisation that serve broad customer needs.
Strategic Gap
The extent to which a companies required financial performance, for some future period, is greater than the projected financial performance.
Product Manager
The person responsible for the profitability of a single product or group of products.
Product Markets
Product groups that serve narrow customer needs.
Product Mix
The total set of products that a company sells.
Product Orientation
A company whose primary concern is to produce as much as possible, with high efficiency.
Product Position
The place the product occupies in the consumer’s mind with respect to a small number of key attributes, which can be tangible or intangible.
Product Positioning
The process marketers go through in manipulating the marketing mix to achieve a particular product position.
Product Positioning Map
Shows how consumers perceive competing products that serve a particular need based on a set of key attributes.
Profit Centre
The part of an organisation that is responsible for sales, expenses and investments and is accountable for the profits it generates.
Promotion
Communication by marketers that attempts to inform, persuade, and influence potential buyers of a product in order to elicit a response.
Publicity
Non personal stimulation of the demand for goods, services or business units by generating commercially significant news about them in the mass media. It is not paid for directly by a sponsor.
Pull Strategy
A promotion strategy in which the manufacturer directs the majority of promotional effort toward the ultimate consumer in an attempt to get them to pull the products through the marketing channel.
Push Strategy
A promotion strategy in which the bulk of the promotional effort is directed at the members of the marketing channel to get them to push the product forward in the marketing channel.
Reach
The percentage of the advertising target that is exposed to at least one of the firm’s advertisements within a given period.
Real Time
The processing of transactions as they occur rather than batching them. Real time systems are those with response time of milliseconds, interactive system in seconds and batch system in hours or days.
Reference Groups
The groups with which an individual identifies: thus, the group becomes a standard, a norm, or a point of reference for the consumer.
Reminder Advertising
Advertising that has the objectives of keeping a firm’s brand name(s) well entrenched in the customer’s mind and reinforcing previous promotional efforts.
Research Design
A blueprint or map for obtaining and collecting the primary data needed to test a hypothesis.
Reseller’s Brand
A brand that is owned by a retailer or wholesaler. The reseller assumes major responsibility for the design of the marketing mix.
Respondent
A person who is asked for information using either written or verbal questioning, typically employing a questionnaire to guide the questioning.
Sales Analysis
The process of breaking down aggregate sales data to determine a firm’s strengths and potential problem area.
Oligopoly
A competitive structure in which there are only a few sellers and each company’s sales are a high percentage of the total market. Each brand has unique characteristics but can be substituted easily. Sellers cannot ignore each other’s actions.
On-Line
Connected to a network or via a network.
Opinion Leader
Someone who actively espouses his or her opinion about products or from whom others seek out the views and opinions of products.
Perception
The process of receiving and deriving meaning from stimuli present in the environment.
Persuasive Advertising
Advertisement that incorporates a high proportion of subjective statements and claims and attempts to convince consumers that a particular product is the best one for them.
Pixel
In computer graphics, the smallest element of a display space that can be independently assigned color or intensity.
Platform
Hardware environment that supports the running of a computer system.
Postscrip
A language defined by Adobe Systems, Inc. for describing how to create an image on a page.
Prestige Pricing
A pricing tactic that recognises that a product’s equality image may be directly associated with price. If the price is set too low, the sales may be lower than with a higher price because of the poor quality inferences associated with a low price.
Price
Something of value that is exchanged for something else.
Price Discrimination
When two business firms buy identical merchandise and/or services from the same supplier but pay different prices.
Pricing Strategies
Where a company wants to position its product’s price in relation to the prices of competing products. For existing products there are three price strategies, pricing above, below and at the market.
Primary Demand
Demand for a product class rather than for a particular brand within that class.
Probability Sample
A sampling plan in which each individual in the population has a known probability of being selected.
Product
A bundle of tangible and intangible attributes that a seller offers the potential buyer and that satisfies the buyers needs or wants.
Product Advertising
Advertising that attempts to promote a good or service for a particular organisation.
Product Audit
A regularly scheduled evaluation of all existing products in the product mix in terms of their strengths, weaknesses and potential.
Product Development
A growth strategy in which the firm develops new products or modifies existing products to better serve its existing markets.
Product Life Cycle
The stages a product moves through from its introduction to the market, to its disappearance from the market. The stages are introduction, growth, maturity and decline.
Product Line
A group of products that are closely related for the same end use (all televisions), are sold to the same customer group (junior miss womenswear), or fall within a given price range (budget womenswear).
Market Development
A growth strategy in which the firm attempts to sell existing products in new markets.
Market Forecast
The expected sales for the market as a whole during a specified period under assumed environmental.
Market Penetration
A growth strategy that involves concentrating on existing markets and products.
Market Potential
The maximum amount of product that could be sold by all companies in a market during a given period with a maximum level of industry marketing activity under an assumed set of environmental conditions.
Market Segmentation
The process of dividing a heterogeneous group of buyers or potential buyers into more homogeneous groups with relatively similar product needs.
Market Share
A company’s sales in a particular market divided by total market sales.
Marketing
The process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organisational objectives.
Marketing Concept
A marketing philosophy in which companies study the consumer to determine consumer needs and wants and organise and integrate all activities within the firm toward helping the consumer fulfil these needs and wants while simultaneously achieving organisational goals
Marketing Mix
The four controllable marking variables: product, distribution (or place), promotion and price.
Marketing Model
An abstraction of some real marketing phenomena to be used as a frame of reference to facilitate decision making.
Media Mix
The combination of media types (radio, television, magazine, newspaper, direct mail and outdoor displays) that is used to communicate a message.
Media Plan
The part of the advertising plan that establishes the media mix and specific media vehicles and develops the media vehicle.
Methodology
A collection of methods and tools, designed and arranged so as to provide guidance in achieving a specific objective.
Missionary Salesperson
A salesperson who attempts to create goodwill in the marketing channel providing potential or existing product information, advice, or assistance on product use. This type of salesperson does not obtain or take orders.
Modem
A device that can convert a digital bit stream into an analog signal (modulation) and can convert incoming analog signals back into digital signals (demodulation).
Monopoly
A competitive structure in which there is only one seller of a product.
Multimedia
A single work assembled using elements from more than one medium, such as high-resolution color images, sounds, video, and text that contains characters in multiple fonts and styles.
Network
A collection of two or more computers interconnected by telephone lines, coaxial cables, satellite links, radio, and/or some other communication technique. A computer ‘network’ is a group of computers which are connected together and which communicate with one another for a common purpose.
Objectives
Specific, quantifiable outcomes which a company wants to achieve in a given period.
Off-Line
Not connected to a network.
Family Branding
The practice of using a single brand name (usually the organisation’s name) for all products in the product mix.
Franchise
A contractual vertical marketing system in which an entire business format is licensed.
Full Cost Analysis
An approach to marketing profitability analysis in which all costs are identified with a particular area, such as a product line, channel.
General Public
The totality of society on which companies are dependent for support and freedom to function or operate.
Generic Branding
Identifying a product by its generic contents: soap, coffee, sugar, and so on.
Generic Competition
Competition between all products capable of satisfying the same basic need.
Generic Market
A market that consists of all products capable of satisfying the same basic needs.
Gobbeldygook
Language that is meaningless or is made unintelligible by excessive use of abstruse technical terms; nonsense.
Handshaking
A procedure performed by modems, terminals, and computers to verify that communication has been correctly established.
Homogeneous Market
A marketplace that hosts trading in a particular type of commodity where each unit traded is functionally identical to every other unit traded.
Host
A computer that is made available for use by multiple people simultaneously.
Individual Branding
The practice of giving each product in the product mix a distinct brand name.
Informative Advertising
Advertising that attempts to provide customers with objective information about the product’s attributes and does not try to persuade.
Institutional Advertising
Advertising that will enhance the image of the company or organisation rather than sell a specific product. This type of advertising can be directed at any of the organisation’s philosophies, values or differentials.
International Marketing
The marketing of goods and services between countries.
Kerning
The spacing between the characters of a font.
Licensing
Granting a company in another country the right to produce and/or market your products for a fee. Also, the authorised use of a brand, brand name, brand mark, trademark, or trade name in conjunction with a good, service, or promotion in return for a royalty.
Manufacturer’s Brand
A brand that is owned by the manufacturer.
Market
All potential buyers with a similar need and the purchasing power to fill this need, and all firms or sellers offering to satisfy that need.
Market Attractiveness
An uncontrollable dimensions of the business screen that includes market size, market growth rate, competitive intensity, legal constraints, and a host of other things that represent the opportunities and threats emanating from the SBU’s external environments.
Contribution Margin
An approach to marketing profitability analysis in which only those costs that can be traced directly to an area of the company are assigned to that area.
Convenience Product
A product that is purchased by the consumer with a minimum of time and effort.
Culture
The beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular organisation. (It’s the way things happen around here.)
Customer Service
The process by which an organisation delivers its services or products in a way that allows the customer to access them in the most efficient, fair, cost effective, and humanly satisfying and pleasurable manner possible.
Data
Any information stored by a computer.
Data Management
The way individuals, companies, and organisations manage computer data.
Decoding
A step in the communication process in which a receiver receives and interprets the message transmitted.
Demographic Variables
The general characteristics of a population, such as age, sex, income, education, and family life cycle.
Desktop
This is the screen that appears if you are not browsing the Internet, reading a file, or playing a game. Your icons are on this screen.
Digital
Information that can be represented by a collection of bits.
Diversification
A growth strategy that involves taking a company into new products and new markets.
Download
The process where you copy something from another computer or the Internet, and save it on your computer.
Durable Good
A manufactured product capable of a long, useful life, such as furniture, household appliances and automobiles.
Economic Environment
An external environment of a company that includes the factors that determine the income and wealth-generating ability of the economy.
Economic Factors
Factors concerned with the influence of a person’s income and other economic resources on purchasing behaviour.
Encoding
A step in the communication process in which the sender puts a thought or idea into words, actions, or symbols.
Environmental Scanner
A person who collects and analyses data and information on the firm’s external environments.
Ethical Environment
An external environment of the company that is composed of the norms or moral behaviour that society imposes on business and marketers.
Exclusive Dealing
The practice of a seller giving a reseller the exclusive right to sell a product in each geographic area.
External Environments
The set of forces outside the organisation that affect the organisation’s survival potential and influence its decision-making process.
Advertising
Any paid form of non-personal presentation of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor.
Advertising Agency
An independent company that specialises in developing advertising programs or plans for a fee.
Advertising Target
The parts or parts of an organisations target market that the company wishes to attract.
Analog
A method of storing information, used by most audiotapes, videotapes and laser discs.
Asset
An item of value to which a company has ownership rights and is expected to generate future benefits.
Backup
An extra copy of a file or document.
Balance of payments
The total outflow of currency, (or its equivalent), contrasted to the inflow of foreign currency, (or its equivalent). i.e. A favourable balance of payments occurs when inflows exceed outflows.
Bandwidth
How much data you can send through a network or modem connection.
Brand
A symbol, design, name, term, or combination of all these, that uniquely identifies an organisation’s product or service and distinguishes it from the competition.
Brand Mark
The part of a brand that can be seen but not voiced (usually a symbol or design; i.e. the hood ornament on a Mercedes Benz).
Branding License
The authorised use of a brand, brand name, brand mark, trademark, or trade name in conjunction with a good, service, or promotion that the brand was not initially designed for in return for a royalty.
Browser
A program you use to browse files. A web browser will browse internet files, such as Firefox or Internet Explorer.
Cannibalism
The extent to which a new product robs its sales from existing products the company sells.
Cognitive Dissonance
Doubt that occurs when the consumer becomes aware that unchosen alternatives have desirable attributes, leading the consumer to wonder whether he or she made the right decision.
Communication Process
A process that includes a sender who encodes a message, which is then transmitted through a message channel, and the receiver who decodes the message and provides feedback to the sender.
Comparative Advertising
Advertising in which a company’s brand is compared with competing brands on a set of product attributes.
Competitive Environment
An external environment of a company that consists of all other sellers who are vying for the patronage of the same consumers or market the firm is seeking.
Concept Testing
A tool for assessing the feasibility of a new product idea by presenting a group of potential buyers with a word description and/or drawing of the proposed product.
Consumer Market
A market consisting of all buyers and potential buyers for goods and services that are acquired for personal or household use.
Consumer Orientation
The dimension of the marketing concept that argues that a company can be more successful if it determines consumer needs and wants before it decides what product to produce and/or sell.