Marketing: The Market, Market Structure, and Market Data

Vocabulary flashcards covering core marketing concepts, including market structures, market environments, consumer segments, data sources, market share formulas, and transaction models.

Market

Mainly the set of current & potential buyers of a product or a service.

Current Buyers

Customers who already buy the product or brand, whether from your company or from a competitor.

Potential Buyers

Also called relative non consumers: people who don’t buy the product today, but could if conditions or offers change.

Four Components of a Market

1. Need: the problem a customer trying to solve
2. Product: the physical thing being sold
3. Clientele: the type of person, whatever they buy
4. Territory or time horizon: where, or when, a market exists

Upstream Market

A market before production, consisting of raw materials and suppliers.

Downstream Market

A market after production, consisting of retailers and outlets.

Prescription Market

A market structure where the prescriber is the target.

Captive Market

A market where customers have little or no alternative.

Main Market

The direct competitors of the company you are studying (e.g., SNCF, Train Italia).

Substitute Market

A different way to meet the same need (e.g., Plane, bus or Blablacar).

Generic Market

The main market plus substitute market added together (e.g., Every way to get form Lyon to Paris).

Support Market

Everything needed to actually use the product once chosen (e.g., Fuel).

Market Funnel (Company Perspective)

1. Total Population: everyone, including people who will never buy
2. Potential Market: everyone who could buy the broad category
3. Targeted Market: the segment the brand actually targets
4. Current Market: the brand’s actual customers today

Absolute Non Consumers

Consumers who will never buy for physical, economic, psychological, geographic, or moral reasons (e.g., driving lessons for a blind person). Marketing actions cannot convert them because no message can change a physical impossibility.

Relative Non Consumers

Individuals who are not consumers today, but could become one (e.g., a vegetarian who never tried a plant-based burger). Marketing actions can convert them into consumers.

Market Data

Brings together the numbers and insights needed to understand a market (size, structure, players, trends & behaviors), serving as a strategy foundation, clarifying demand & competition, and guiding decisions.

Internal Data

Numbers already sitting inside the company, including past sales, customer records, and website analytics.

Market Intelligence

Everyday information about competitors and the wider market, gathered continuously.

Market Research

A specific study designed to answer one question, run when needed.

Volume Share

A metric used for comparing sales quantities / physical sales volume, calculated as: $\frac{\text{Unit sold by } X}{\text{total units sold in the market, over a period } T}$

Value Share

A metric used for comparing turnover / comparing revenues, calculated as: $\frac{\text{Turnover of } X}{\text{total value of sales in the market, over a period } T}$

Growth Rate

A metric that shows how fast a market changes for tracking market evolution, calculated as: $\frac{\text{value this year} - \text{value last year}}{\text{value last year}}$

B2C (Business to Consumer)

A market relationship where the brand addresses an individual, the end consumer (e.g., Carrefour).

B2B (Business to Business)

A market relationship where the brand addresses another company (e.g., EDF).

P2P (Peer to Peer)

A market relationship where one individual buys to another individual (e.g., Vinted).