Marketing Glossary
Advertising: The act of purchasing placement of your marketing materials in some form of media.
Brand: Both physical creative elements and the mental concept of a company. Created in the mind of the customer in both an instant and over time, brand is controlled by every touch point a company has with the customer. This includes marketing materials, but is more heavily influenced with personal interactions and materials once the prospect becomes a customer.
Company: The legal entity that is defined as the company itself and then all of the people associated with the company (legal entity): owner, management, employees, stockholders, suppliers, distributors, etc.
Competitive Advantage: The unique features of a company and/or the company’s product that are perceived by consumers as significant and superior to the competition.
Cost Competitive Advantage: Being the low-cost leader in the industry while maintaining adequate profit margins. Historically a position that cannot be maintained.
Customer Value: The relationship between the benefits received by exchanging money for product and the sacrifice necessary to obtain those benefits.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): The future profits expected from a customer over their lifetime of purchases from your company. Sometimes calculated by product.
Customer Satisfaction: A mental judgment by the customer as to whether a product or service has met their needs and expectations.
Database Marketing: Any type of sales and marketing process which utilizes a database to record touches and next steps with a customer.
e-Business: Using electronic technology to streamline a company's operations.
Empowerment: Giving employees the ability to quickly fix a customers’ problem without having to seek approval from superiors.
Environmental Scanning: Collecting and interpreting information regarding factors in the external environment (forces, events, and relationships) that have the potential of affecting the future of the business or the implementation of the marketing plan.
Exchange: When someone exchanges something of value for something they need, or want more.
Experience Curve (Learning Curve): A model of product pricing that shows how a products cost declines as experience producing the product increases.
Family Brand: This occurs when a brand has extensions of itself developed to leverage the power of the original brand for marketing. Example: Coke, Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, Caffeine Free Coke, Coke Zero, Etc.
Global Industry: An industry where the businesses that comprise the industry are located around the world. Example: Ship manufacturing.
Holistic Marketing: A school of marketing thought that focuses on strategic and tactical marketing as a whole and seeks to understand the interdependencies of the market, the business' competitive advantage, potential campaigns and programs, processes, offers and activities of marketing in order to produce the highest return on investment in the short and long term.
Innovation: Reworking a product, service or idea so that it is new, or perceived as new in the eyes of the market place.
Joint Venture: A company funded with capital from multiple investors. These multiple investors share ownership and control of the company.
Loyalty: When a customer continues to purchase from the same business whenever they have a need for a product that businesses sells.
Market Orientation: A business philosophy that believes that making a sale does not depend upon an aggressive sales force, but on the customer’s decision to purchase. (synonymous with marketing concept)
Marketing: An organizational function and the process of planning conceptualizing, pricing, promoting, and distributing ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that deliver value to customers and satisfy or benefit consumers, the business and it’s stakeholders.
Marketing Concept: A business philosophy that believes by satisfying consumers wants and needs, an organization can realize its social, organizational and economic objectives.
Marketing Myopia: Defining a business in terms of goods and services instead of the benefits the company brings to consumers.
Marketing Objective: Typically a written statement of the objective to be accomplished with marketing activities.
Marketing Planning: Designing activities relating to marketing objectives and the changing marketing environment.
Marketing Plan: A written document that encapsulates what the marketer has learned about the marketplace, describes how the organization plans to reach its marketing goals, and acts as a guidebook of marketing activities for the marketing manager.
Mission Statements: The goal of the company in a clear and concise form which states why the company is in business in the first place and what benefit the business brings to the consumer.
Net Price Analysis: Price analysis that averages all of the different price points such as list price, average discount, promotional spending and co-op advertising. When divided by sales volume, this number gives you the average price per sale after you have paid customer acquisition costs and averaged all of the different price points a company has.
Niche Competitive Advantage: The advantage achieved when a company seeks to target and serve a small segment of the market.
Overall Market Share: The company's sales divided by the total market sales yields the market share percentage.
Partner Relationship Management (PRM): Relationship building activities a company uses with vendors and partners such as ad agencies, distributors and suppliers. Most common form: Lunch.
Planning: The process of anticipating future events and determining best course of action strategies to achieve future organizational objectives.
Product Orientation: A business philosophy that focuses on selling the product the company makes rather than delivering a product that the marketplace desires or needs.
Product/service differentiation competitive advantage: A product or service offering that is unique, special and valuable to consumers beyond simply offering a lower price than competitors.
Relationship Marketing: A marketing strategy that seeks to build long-term relationships with customers because a retained customer base who purchases repeatedly minimizes customer acquisition costs.
Sales Orientation: A business philosophy that believes consumers will buy more goods and services if aggressive sales techniques are used and that high sales results in high profits.
Sales Promotion: Short term incentives designed to stimulate and drive greater sales volume.
Sales Marketing Orientation: A business idea that the company does not exist just to make a profit or to meet its objectives, but to serve humanity and enhance and preserve societies and individuals best interests.
Strategic Business Units (SBUs): A sub-business inside a larger business that can be planned separately from the rest of the company. SBU’s typically have their own set of competitors and dedicated management who is responsible for strategic planning and profit performance, marketing, manufacturing, and operations. Sprite is an SBU of Coca-Cola. Buick is an SBU of GM. Virgin Airways is an SBU of Virgin.
Strategic Planning: A managerial process of developing a strategy that defines the ideal outcome when properly utilizing an organizations resources on evolving marketplace opportunities.
Sustainable Competitive Advantage: An advantage that cannot be copied by the competition.
SWOT Analysis: An exercise where members of the strategic marketing planning team identify the company’s internal strengths (S) and weaknesses (W) then examine the external opportunities (O) and threats (T).
Tactical Marketing Plan: Integrated marketing tactics that work together to maximize the touch points with the customer and take advantage of the businesses competitive advantage which includes product features and benefits, specific promotions, chosen media, pricing, merchandising, channels and service.
Teamwork: Collaborative efforts of people to accomplish common, shared objectives.
Unsought Goods: Products a customer needs, but usually doesn't want and doesn't think of buying, like fire extinguishers, light bulbs and air conditioner filters.
Viral Marketing: Shocking, funny or otherwise creative films or animations that stand out from the clutter on the Internet and encourage people to share with friends. These are designed by companies for marketing to increase exposure. These are branding efforts and are difficult to measure the effectiveness of.
Yield Pricing: Yield pricing occurs when companies offer different price structures depending upon timing of the product. For instance, a cell phone manufacturer offers a pre-launch price for the phone and if you pre-pay you get a discount. This ensures the launch will be successful and tests market acceptance for the product. Then when the phone is announced and hits store, the price rises. Finally, 6 months later just before the new phone comes out, the phone is discounted to levels below the pre-launch price to move existing inventory to make room for the new model.
Z
Zero-Level Channel (direct-marketing channel): A manufacturer selling directly to the final customer without using distributors.
