Marketing Concepts and Strategies

Vocabulary flashcards covering pricing strategies, distribution intensity, market segmentation, product categories, and promotional mix elements from the marketing lecture.

Price Skimming

A pricing strategy where a firm charges the highest initial price that customers are willing to pay and progressively lowers it over time as initial demand is satisfied and competitors enter the market.

Penetration Pricing

A strategy where a brand introduces a low price for a new product or service to undercut competitors, capture high sales volume among price-elastic consumers, and later raises prices to reflect increasing product value.

Price Matching (Match Competition)

A strategy where a seller offers to match or beat a competitor's price on identical or similar items to prevent customer switching, build trust, and signal confidence in product value.

Demand-Based Pricing

A pricing model where prices are set based on consumer demand, raising prices when demand is high and lowering them when demand is low to optimize sales volume and revenue.

Premium Pricing

A pricing tactic where an offering is intentionally priced above the market average or competitor levels to enhance perceived quality and establish a high-end luxury brand image.

Pricing Bands

The pricing range established for a line of products based on competitive intensity and the consumer's perceived value across different tiers, models, or trim levels.

Production Adoption Curve

A model illustrating the sequential segments of consumers who adopt an innovation over time: Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards.

Merchant Wholesaler

An independent intermediary in indirect sales who purchases goods from manufacturers, takes legal title (ownership) of those goods, and resells them to businesses, retailers, or institutions.

Agent Wholesaler

An intermediary in marketing channels who facilitates sales on behalf of producers and earns commission fees without taking title or ownership of the products sold.

Full-Service Merchant Wholesaler

An intermediary that manages end-to-end distribution functions—purchasing, dividing, storing, delivering, financing, promoting, and gathering market intelligence—while bearing all financial risks of lost or damaged inventory.

Limited-Service Merchant Wholesaler

A merchant wholesaler that provides only a specific, restricted subset of distribution, sales, or logistics services to buyers.

Cash-and-Carry Wholesaler

A limited-service wholesaler that maintains a physical sales location where retailers and commercial buyers travel to purchase goods in cash and transport the inventory themselves.

Truck Wholesaler

A limited-service wholesaler that transports and sells small quantities of merchandise directly from a vehicle to retailers and buyers, frequently operating at local markets.

Rack Jobber

A limited-service wholesaler that purchases, stocks, displays, and monitors inventory directly on store shelves for retail partners.

Drop Shipper

A limited-service wholesaler that markets merchandise and secures customer orders through websites or landing pages but passes the orders directly to producers for delivery without physically handling inventory.

Mail-Order Wholesaler

A limited-service intermediary that sells products to retailers and customers using print or digital catalogs distributed through the mail.

Product Category

A cluster of products that are closely related because they meet a similar need, share physical traits and benefits, are used together, target the same customer group, or occupy a comparable price bracket.

Promotion

Any persuasive or informative marketing communication designed to highlight the merits of a product, service, brand, or issue to raise awareness, stimulate demand, or build loyalty.

Promotion Mix Ingredients

The complete array of marketing communication channels available to reach target audiences, including advertising, public relations, personal selling, sales promotion, digital media, and direct marketing.

Public Relations (PR)

A strategic communication process that builds and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and its various publics, often transmitting non-paid messages through media channels.

Product Use Variables

A behavioral or functional segmentation method where products are engineered and marketed according to specific user requirements or gender-based usage patterns (such as Gillette's Daisy razor).

Differentiated Targeting Strategy

A marketing strategy (also known as segmented marketing) where an organization identifies multiple distinct target segments and designs tailored products and marketing mixes for each.

Concentrated Marketing

A market targeting approach where an organization focuses all of its marketing efforts and creates a single marketing campaign for one specific, narrow demographic or niche audience.

Undifferentiated Marketing

A broad marketing strategy where a business develops a single uniform message and product offering for an entire market, treating all consumers alike.

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)

A strategic planning process designed to ensure that all brand contacts and promotional messages received by a customer across all media are mutually reinforcing, relevant, and consistent over time.

Exclusive Distribution

A highly restrictive distribution strategy where a firm sells products through only a few carefully selected, premium retail outlets (e.g., Rolex watches or Cartier jewelry).

Selective Distribution

An intermediate level of distribution intensity where a manufacturer makes products available through a moderate number of specific, vetted retail outlets (such as consumer electronics brands).

Intensive Distribution

A maximum-coverage distribution strategy where a company places its products in every feasible retail outlet, from convenience shops to national chains (e.g., bread, milk, and soft drinks).

Price Cutting

The reduction of product prices to launch a product, stimulate quarterly sales volume, or confront competitors, which can sometimes escalate into a margin-eroding price war.

Loss Leader

A pricing tactic where a popular item is sold below its market cost or profit margin to attract shoppers into a store with the expectation that they will buy other, more profitable items.

Permanent Price Cut

A lasting markdown in list price, frequently enacted due to the introduction of updated product versions or to re-stimulate stagnant consumer demand.

Product Life Cycle (PLC)

The biological-style progression through which a product evolves over time, encompassing four core stages: Introduction, Growth, Maturity, and Decline.

Revitalization

An optional fifth stage of the product life cycle in which a mature or declining brand implements changes to recapture market interest and restart sales growth.

Market Segmentation

The practice of dividing a broad pool of prospective buyers into distinct sub-groups who share common needs and exhibit similar responses to marketing initiatives.

Convenience Goods

Low-cost, readily available consumer items purchased frequently with minimal effort and little to no product comparison (e.g., sugar, laundry detergent).

Shopping Goods

Moderately priced goods purchased less frequently, where consumers actively invest time comparing style, price, and quality across alternatives (e.g., clothing, furniture).

Specialty Products

High-priced offerings with unique characteristics or recognized brand prestige for which consumers are willing to expend special purchasing effort without comparing competitors (e.g., luxury sports cars, luxury watches).

Unsought Goods

Items that buyers do not routinely think about or search for until an urgent or specific necessity arises (e.g., emergency towing services, life insurance).

Advertising Platform

The central selling point, theme, or core strategic issue that an advertiser chooses to build an advertising campaign around.

Marginal Analysis

An economic evaluation comparing the additional revenues or benefits gained from an activity against the incremental costs required to execute that activity.

Vertical Marketing System (VMS)

A distribution channel structure in which producers, wholesalers, and retailers collaborate as a unified system to optimize channel efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Corporate VMS

A vertical marketing system where successive stages of production and distribution are owned and operated by a single enterprise.

Contractual VMS

A vertical marketing system where independent production and distribution firms integrate their operational programs through formal contractual agreements.

Administered VMS

A vertical marketing system that achieves alignment across distribution stages through the dominant market size, scale, and influence of one powerful channel member rather than through formal ownership.

Push Strategy

A channel promotion strategy wherein a manufacturer offers trade incentives, discounts, and allowances to intermediaries to encourage them to carry and push goods to retailers.

Pull Strategy

A channel promotion strategy that focuses marketing efforts, coupons, and discounts directly on end consumers to induce them to pull products through the retail channel.

Captive Pricing

A product line pricing approach where the basic product is offered at a low price, while essential recurring consumables or accessories needed to operate it are sold at high profit margins.

Price Bundling

A pricing tactic where two or more related products are packaged together and sold for a combined price that is lower than the sum of their individual prices.