Marketing Fundamentals: Consumer Behavior, STP, Branding & Research Flashcards

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering customer needs, product utility, consumer behavior, persuasion routes, segmentation, positioning, push/pull/DTC strategies, branding elements, and marketing research methods from the lecture material.

Functional Needs

Practical, tangible needs that a product fulfills, such as buying winter boots to keep feet warm.

Psychological Needs (Symbolic)

Emotional, social, or personal needs that a product fulfills, such as buying designer boots to feel confident or fashionable.

Form Utility

The value created by a product's design, features, or physical characteristics, such as turning raw ingredients into a ready-to-eat meal.

Task Utility

Utility provided when a product helps someone complete a specific task or job, such as a vacuum cleaner making cleaning easier.

Possession Utility

Utility created by making it easy for customers to own or obtain a product, such as offering payment plans, financing, or easy checkout.

Time Utility

Utility created by making a product available when customers need it, such as a grocery store staying open late.

Place Utility

Utility created by making a product available where customers need it, such as a coffee shop located near a campus.

Psychic Utility

The emotional or psychological satisfaction a customer gets from owning or using a product, such as feeling accomplished from buying a luxury watch.

Cognitive Dissonance

Mental discomfort experienced when a person's actions, decisions, values, or beliefs do not match, frequently occurring as postpurchase uncertainty or regret.

Central Route to Persuasion

A pathway in the Elaboration Likelihood Model involving high consumer involvement, focus on central product-related information, deep elaboration, and strongly held attitude changes.

Peripheral Route to Persuasion

A pathway in the Elaboration Likelihood Model involving low consumer involvement, focus on peripheral non-product cues (such as music, colors, or celebrities), low elaboration, and easily changed attitudes.

Brand Loyalty

Continuous repurchase of a specific brand achieved by breaking competitor habits, acquiring new habits toward the advertiser's product, and reinforcing existing habits.

Negative Motives

Consumer motivations centered on problem removal or avoidance, relief, incomplete satisfaction, mixed approach-avoidance, or normal depletion.

Positive Motives

Consumer motivations centered on obtaining a benefit, bonus, reward, sensory gratification, intellectual stimulation/mastery, or social approval.

Sole Users

Consumers who purchase and use only one particular brand in a product category.

Semi-Sole Users

Consumers who primarily purchase one brand but occasionally purchase an alternative brand.

Discount Users

Consumers who purchase a brand mainly when it is on sale or discounted.

Aware Nontriers

Consumers who know about a brand but have never actually tried or purchased it.

Trial/Rejectors

Consumers who tried a product or brand but decided they did not like it and stopped purchasing it.

Repertoire Users

Consumers who regularly switch between or purchase several brands within the same product category.

Geodemographic Segmentation

A segmentation strategy that combines geographic location data with demographic population characteristics to target similar households or neighborhoods.

AIO (Activities, Interests, Opinions)

Psychographic segmentation variables that measure what consumers do with their time (activities), what they care about (interests), and what they believe (opinions).

Product Life Cycle

The progression of a product through four distinct marketplace stages: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.

Push Strategy

A marketing strategy aimed at pushing a product through distribution channels by offering trade incentives, retailer discounts, and wholesale promotions.

Pull Strategy

A marketing strategy that creates consumer demand through advertising and promotions so that customers actively seek out and request the product from retailers.

Direct-to-Consumer (DTC)

A business model in which a company sells products directly to consumers through its own website or stores, bypassing third-party retailers.

Perceptible Differentiation

Readily observable physical differences in a product that consumers can directly see, touch, hear, taste, or feel, such as tire tread design.

Hidden Differentiation

Product differences that are not immediately visible to consumers but directly affect performance or quality, such as specialized winter tire materials.

Induced Differentiation

Intangible product differences created through marketing, advertising, and branding that drive what consumers feel about a brand.

Brand Equity

The total added value given to a product by its brand name, calculated as brand awareness plus brand image.

Unaided Recall

A consumer's ability to remember a specific brand or advertisement from memory without receiving any hints or prompts.

Aided Recall

A consumer's ability to remember a brand or advertisement after being provided with a hint, clue, or prompt.

Primary Research

Original research conducted firsthand by a company to collect new, specific data directly addressing a current research problem.

Secondary Research

Research that analyzes information that has already been collected, compiled, or published by internal or external sources.

Qualitative Research

Research focused on gathering descriptive, non-numerical insights to understand consumers' thoughts, feelings, motivations, and perspectives.

Quantitative Research

Research focused on gathering measurable, numerical data to statistically analyze variables, patterns, and frequencies.

Projective Techniques

Qualitative research methods (such as word association or sentence completion) that encourage consumers to indirectly reveal underlying feelings and associations.

Dialogue Balloon Tests

A projective qualitative research technique where participants fill in empty speech bubbles in an image to reveal their perceptions and feelings.

Test Markets

A quantitative experimental method where a company introduces a new product or marketing campaign in a limited geographic region before a national launch.

A/B Split Testing

An experimental research method that compares the performance of two different versions of an advertisement or message to determine which is more effective.

Split-Cable Testing

An experimental research technique where different versions of a television advertisement are delivered to separate households connected to the same cable system.

Split-Run Testing

An experimental research method where different versions of an advertisement are printed in separate copies of the exact same publication or magazine issue.

Split-List Testing

An experimental research method where a mailing or email list is divided into groups to test different promotional messages or offers.

Environmental Scanning

The process of monitoring and analyzing external macro-environmental forces (political, economic, sociocultural, technological, competitive, legal/regulatory) affecting marketing decisions.

Creative Brief

A document outlining the strategic direction, background, target audience, objectives, key message, and tone for an advertising campaign.

Pretesting

Research conducted before an advertising campaign is released to evaluate message clarity, consumer reactions, and potential effectiveness.

Posttesting

Research conducted after an advertising campaign launches to evaluate its actual performance against objectives, recall, exposure, and sales.

Storyboard

A visual sequence of illustrated frames detailing the storyline, scenes, and key actions planned for a video or television commercial.

Animatic

A preliminary animated version of a storyboard featuring timed frames, draft audio, voiceovers, and basic motion to test commercial timing and pacing.

Campaign Tracking

Continuous posttesting research that monitors brand performance, consumer awareness, attitudes, and purchase intent over the duration of a campaign.

ARU (Inquiry Tests)

Posttesting inquiry criteria assessing whether an advertisement successfully achieves Attention, Readability, and Understandability.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Specific, quantifiable metrics used to track and evaluate how effectively an advertising campaign achieves its marketing and communication objectives.