MKTG 2501 Key Terminology

Marketing

The set of strategies and activities by which companies acquire and engage customers, build strong customer relationships, and create superior customer value in order to capture value from customers in return.

Needs

States of felt deprivation.

Wants

The form human needs take as they are shaped by culture and individual personality.

Demands

Human wants that are backed by buying power.

Market offerings

Some combination of products, services, solutions, and experiences offered to a market to satisfy a need or want.

Marketing myopia

The mistake of paying more attention to the specific products a company offers than to the benefits and experiences produced by these products.

Exchange

The act of obtaining a desired object from a person or an organization by offering something in return.

Market

The set of all actual and potential buyers of a product or service.

Production concept

The idea that consumers will favor products that are available and highly affordable and that the organization should therefore focus on improving production and distribution efficiency.

Product concept

The idea that consumers will favor products that offer the most in quality, performance, and innovative features.

Selling concept

The idea that consumers will not buy enough of the firm’s products unless the firm undertakes a large-scale selling and promotion effort.

Marketing concept

A philosophy in which achieving organizational goals depends on knowing the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions better than competitors do.

Societal marketing concept

The idea that a company’s marketing decisions should consider consumers’ wants, the company’s requirements, consumers’ long-run interests, and society’s long-run interests.

Customer relationship management

The overall process of building and maintaining profitable customer relationships by delivering superior customer value and satisfaction.

Customer-perceived value

The customer’s evaluation of the difference between the benefits delivered by and the costs of obtaining and using a market offering, relative to those of competing offerings.

Customer satisfaction

The sense of pleasure a buyer feels when a product’s perceived performance matches or exceeds their expectations.

Customer-engagement marketing

Making the brand a meaningful part of customers’ conversations and lives by fostering direct and continuous customer involvement in shaping brand conversations, experiences, and community.

Customer brand advocacy

Actions by which satisfied customers initiate favorable interactions with others about a brand.

Customer-generated marketing

Brand exchanges created by customers themselves—both invited and uninvited—by which customers play a role in shaping their own brand experiences and those of other customers.

Partner relationship management

Working closely with partners in other company departments and outside the company to jointly bring greater value to customers.

Customer lifetime value

The value of the entire stream of purchases a customer makes over a lifetime of patronage.

Share of customer

The percentage of a customer's spending within a specific product or service category that a company captures

Customer equity

The total combined customer lifetime values of all of the company’s customers.

Internet of Things (IoT)

A global environment where everything and everyone is digitally connected to everything and everyone else.

Digital and social media marketing

Using digital marketing tools to engage consumers anywhere, anytime via their computers, smartphones, tablets, internet-ready TVs, and other digital devices.

Strategic planning

The process of developing and maintaining a profitable strategic fit between the organization’s goals and capabilities and its changing marketing opportunities.

Mission statement

A statement of the organization’s purpose—what it wants to accomplish in the larger environment.

Business portfolio

The collection of businesses and products that make up the company.

Portfolio analysis

The process by which management evaluates and plans for the future of the products and businesses that make up the company.

Growth-share matrix

A portfolio-planning method that evaluates a company’s strategic business units (SBUs) in terms of market growth rate and relative market share.

Product/market expansion grid

A portfolio-planning tool for identifying company growth opportunities through market penetration, market development, product development, or diversification.

Market penetration

Company growth by increasing sales of current products to current market segments without changing the product.

Market development

Company growth by identifying and developing new market segments for current company products.

Product development

Company growth by offering modified or new products to current market segments.

Diversification

Company growth through starting up or acquiring businesses outside the company’s current products and markets.

Marketing strategy

The marketing logic by which the company hopes to create customer value and achieve profitable customer relationships.

Marketing mix

The set of tactical marketing tools—product, price, place, and promotion—that the firm blends to produce the response it wants in the target market.

SWOT analysis

An overall evaluation of the company’s strengths (S), weaknesses (W), opportunities (O), and threats (T).

Marketing implementation

Turning marketing strategies and plans into marketing actions to accomplish strategic marketing objectives.

Marketing control

Measuring and evaluating the results of marketing strategies and plans and taking corrective action to ensure that the objectives are achieved.

Marketing return on investment (marketing ROI)

The net return from a marketing investment divided by the costs of the marketing investment.

Microenvironment

The actors close to the company that affect its ability to serve its customers—the company, suppliers, marketing intermediaries, customer markets, competitors, and publics.

Macroenvironment

The larger societal forces that affect the microenvironment—demographic, economic, natural, technological, political, and cultural forces.

Marketing environment

The actors and forces outside marketing that affect marketing management’s ability to build and maintain successful relationships with target customers.

Marketing intermediaries

Firms that help the company to promote, sell, and distribute its goods to final buyers.

Public

Any group that has an actual or potential interest in or impact on an organization’s ability to achieve its objectives.

Demography

The study of human populations in terms of size, density, location, age, gender, race, occupation, and other statistics.

Baby boomers

The 76 million people born during the years following World War II and until 1964.

Generation X

The 49 million people born between 1965 and 1980 in the “birth dearth” following the baby boom.

Millennials (Generation Y)

The 83 million children of the baby boomers, born between 1981 and 1996.

Generation Z

People born between 1997 and 2012 who are comfortable with digital technology and social media.

Economic environment

Economic factors that affect consumer purchasing power and spending patterns.

Engel’s laws

Differences noted over a century ago by Ernst Engel in how people shift their spending across food, housing, transportation, health care, and other goods and services as family income rises.

Natural environment

Natural resources that are needed as inputs by marketers or that are affected by marketing activities.

Environmental sustainability

Developing strategies and practices that create a world economy that the planet can support indefinitely.

Technological environment

Forces that create new technologies, creating new product and market opportunities.

Political environment

Laws, government agencies, and pressure groups that influence and limit various organizations and individuals in a given society.

Cultural environment

Institutions and other forces that affect society’s basic values, perceptions, preferences, and behaviors.

Cultural sustainability

The practice of maintaining the cultural beliefs, practices, and heritage of a society for future generations.

Marketing information system (MIS)

People and procedures dedicated to assessing information needs, developing the needed information, and helping decision makers to generate and validate actionable customer and market insights.

Customer insights

Fresh understandings of customers and the marketplace derived from marketing information that become the basis for creating customer value and relationships.

Internal databases

Electronic collections of consumer and market information obtained from data sources within the company network.

Competitive marketing intelligence

The systematic collection and analysis of publicly available information about consumers, competitors, and developments in the marketing environment.

Marketing research

The systematic design and execution of initiatives to collect, analyze, and report data, information, and insights relevant to a specific marketing situation faced by an organization.

Exploratory research

Marketing research to gather preliminary information that will help define problems and suggest hypotheses.

Descriptive research

Marketing research to better describe marketing problems, situations, or markets, such as the market potential for a product or the demographics and attitudes of consumers.

Causal research

Marketing research to test hypotheses about cause-and-effect relationships.

Secondary data

Information that already exists somewhere, having been collected for another purpose.

Primary data

Information collected for the specific purpose at hand.

Commercial online databases

Computerized collections of information available from online commercial sources or via the internet.

Observational research

Gathering primary data by observing relevant people, actions, and situations.

Ethnographic research

A form of observational research that involves sending trained observers to watch and interact with consumers in their “natural environments.”

Survey research

Gathering primary data by asking people questions about their knowledge, attitudes, preferences, and buying behavior.

Experimental research

Gathering primary data by selecting matched groups of subjects, giving them different treatments, controlling related factors, and checking for differences in group responses.

Focus group interviewing

Personal interviewing that involves inviting six to ten people to gather for a few hours with a trained interviewer to talk about a product, service, or organization. The interviewer “focuses” the group discussion on important issues.

Online marketing research

Collecting primary data online through internet surveys, online focus groups, web-based experiments, or tracking consumers’ online behavior.

Online focus groups

Gathering a small group of people online with a trained moderator to chat about a product, service, or organization and gain qualitative insights about consumer attitudes and behavior.

Behavioral targeting (digital marketing)

Using online data to target advertisements and marketing offers to specific consumers.

Sample

A segment of the population selected for marketing research to represent the population as a whole.

Customer relationship management (CRM)

Managing detailed information about individual customers and carefully managing customer touch points to maximize customer loyalty.

Consumer buyer behavior

The buying behavior of final consumers—individuals and households that buy goods and services for personal consumption.

Consumer market

All the individuals and households that buy or acquire goods and services for personal consumption.

Culture

The set of basic values, perceptions, wants, and behaviors learned by a member of society from family and other important institutions.

Subculture

A group of people with shared value systems based on common life experiences and situations.

Social class

Relatively permanent and ordered divisions in a society whose members share similar values, interests, and behaviors.

Group

Two or more people who interact to accomplish individual or mutual goals.

Word-of-mouth influence

The impact of the personal words and recommendations of trusted friends, family, associates, and other consumers on buying behavior.

Opinion leader

A person within a reference group who, because of special skills, knowledge, personality, or other characteristics, exerts social influence on others.

Influencer marketing

Enlisting established influencers or creating new influencers to spread the word about a company’s brands.

Online social networks

Online social communities—blogs, social networking websites, and other online communities—where people socialize or exchange information and opinions.

Lifestyle

A person’s pattern of living as expressed in his or her psychographics.

Personality

The unique psychological characteristics that distinguish a person or group.

Motive (drive)

A need that is sufficiently pressing to direct the person to seek satisfaction of the need.

Perception

The process by which people select, organize, and interpret information to form a meaningful picture of the world.

Learning

Changes in an individual’s behavior arising from experience.

Belief

A descriptive thought that a person holds about something.

Attitude

A person’s consistently favorable or unfavorable evaluations, feelings, and tendencies toward an object or idea.

Complex buying behavior

Consumer buying behavior in situations characterized by high consumer involvement in a purchase and significant perceived differences among brands.

Dissonance-reducing buying behavior

Consumer buying behavior in situations characterized by high involvement but few perceived differences among brands.

Habitual buying behavior

Consumer buying behavior in situations characterized by low consumer involvement and few significant perceived brand differences.