GLOSSARY

'A'

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ABC - A sales acronym that stands for Always Be Closing. A historic and present day sales tip.

"A" credit customers - Consumers with impeccable credit, who can obtain a loan from traditional lenders.

Absolute Product Failure - Loses money; its sales do not cover variable costs.

Acceptance Signal - Signs that your buyer is favorably inclined towards you and your presentation.

Accessibility - The degree to which the resulting segments can be effectively reached and served. 

Acceleration Clause - Language in a lease that secures payments for the full term of the lease.

Account Analysis - The process of analyzing each prospect and customer to maximize the chances of reaching a sales goal.

Account Segmentation - The process of applying different selling strategies to different areas.

Accounts Payable - The amount of money a company owes for goods and services it has received; any outstanding debt that a company has. 

Accounts Receivable - A collection of a company's outstanding invoices (invoices which have not yet been paid by the company's customers). 

Accounts Receivable Aging Report - A report showing how long invoices from each customer have been outstanding.

Achievers - Successful, career and work-oriented. Favor established, prestige products that demonstrate success to their peers.

Acquisition - The act of acquiring a existing products or a company. It is the easiest and quickest way to enter a new market.  It obviates the costly and time-consuming process of attempting to build up internally the knowledge, resources, and reputation necessary to become an effective participant in that part of the market.  

Ad Pre-testing - Is to make improvements in the advertising copy to the fullest extent possible prior to its release. There are three major methods:

1. Direct Ratings - Here a panel of target consumers or advertising experts examine alternative ads and fill out rating questionnaires.

2. Portfolio Tests - Here respondents are given a dummy portfolio of ads and asked to take as much time as they want to read them. After putting them down the respondents are asked to recall the ads they saw.

3. Laboratory Tests - Some researchers assess the potential effect of an as by measuring physiological reactions - heart beat, blood pressure, pupil dilation, perspiration.

Ad Postesting - Is to assess the actual communication impact of the ad after it has appeared in media:

1. Recall Tests - Involve finding persons who are regular users of the media vehicle and asking them to recall advertisers and products contained in the issue under study.

2. Recognition Tests - Call for sampling the readers of a given issue of say, a magazine, asking them to point out what they recognize as having seen and/or read.

Adopter Categories - A classification of customers based on the relative speed at which they adopt new ideas or products. Everett Rodgers distinguishes among five groups: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.

Adoption Process –

1.       Awareness – the individual becomes cognizant of the innovation but lacks information about it.

2.      Interest – the individual is stimulated to seek information about the innovation.

3.      Evaluation – the individual considers whether it would make sense to the innovation.

4.      Trial – the individual tries the innovation on a small scale to improve his or her estimate of its utility.

5.      Adoption – the individual decides to make full and regular use of the innovation. 

Advance Rate - The percentage of the face amount of an income stream that a funding source will advance to a client.

Advantage - The characteristic of a product that describes how it can be used or how it will help the buyer.

Advertising - The activity of attracting public attention to a product or business, as by paid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media. One of the four major tools companies use to direct persuasive communications to target buyers and publics.  It consists of non-personal forms of communication conducted through paid media under clear sponsorship.

Advertising Allowances - Provides an indirect benefit to middlemen to carry merchandise or to increase sales efforts

Advertising and New Product Launch - In launching a new product, the advertiser has to choose among ad Continuity, Concentration, Flighting, and Pulsing.

• Continuity is achieved by scheduling exposures evenly throughout a given period.

• Concentration calls for spending all the advertising dollars in a single period. This makes sense for products with one selling season or holiday.

• Flighting calls for advertising for some period followed by a hiatus with no advertising, followed by a second period of advertising activity.

• Pulsing is continuous advertising at low-weight levels reinforced periodically by waves of heavier activity. Pulsing draws on the strength of continuous advertising and flights to create a compromise scheduling strategy.

Advertising Budget – An itemized summary of estimated or intended expenditures for a given period along with proposals for financing them.

• Affordable Method - Based on what the company can afford. Weakness is that it leads to a fluctuating advertising budget that makes it difficult to plan for long-range market development.

• Percentage-Of-Sales Method - Based on a percentage of their sales (either current or anticipated) or of the sales price.

• Competitive-Parity Method - Budget is based on specifically to match competitors' outlays - that is to maintain competitive parity.

• Objective-and-Task Method - (1) Defining their budget as specifically as possible (2) determining the tasks that must be performed to achieve these objectives, (3) estimating the costs of performing these tasks. The sum of these costs is the proposed advertising budget.

Advertising Carry-Over Effect - A further refinement of a companies market share is to take into account carry over effects of past marketing expenditures.

Advertising Effectiveness Measurement – A continuous effort to research the communications and sales effects of advertising programs before they are run, while they are running and after they are terminated.

Advertising Exposures – The number of different persons of households exposed, the frequency at which they are exposed, and the value of the impact through a given medium.

Advertising Frequency – The number of times with in a specified time period that an average person or household is exposed to the message.

Advertising Impact – The qualitative value of an exposure through a given medium, i.e. a food in good housing magazine would have an higher impact than in the Police Gazette.

Advertising Reach – The number of different persons of households exposed to a media schedule at least once during a specific time period.

Advertising Timing – To schedule the optimal timing of an advertising expenditure.

Acquisition – (of an existing product or company) Is the easiest and quickest way to enter a new market. It obviated the costly and time-consuming process of attempting to build up internally the knowledge, resources, and reputation necessary to become an effective participant in that part of the market. The acquisition can take one of three forms.

1. Corporate-Acquisition - Which involves the search for smaller companies that have attractive product lines.

2. Patent-Acquisition - Which it busy the rights to new product from their original inventors or patent holders.

3. Licensee - The Company can make effort to become a licensee in the manufacture of various products that it wants to produce.

Advocate Revenue - Sales influenced by word-of-mouth advertising.

After-Market – An aftermarket, or captive product, are supplies for bigger items such as copy paper for copiers or film for cameras. 

Affective Response - When the marketer might want to put something into the consumer’s mind, change an attitude, or get the consumer to act.

Age - Consumers wants and abilities change with age. Companies realize this and expand beyond their traditional line to cater to the different age groups.

Age Groups - One aspect in buyer’s decisions is their age. Different age groups purchase different products. 

Agent - A business unit which negotiates purchases or sales or both but does not take title to the goods in which it deals.  The agent usually performs fewer marketing functions than does the merchant.  He commonly receives his renumerartion in the form of a commission or fee.   Examples are: broker, commission merchant, manufactures agent, selling agent, and resident buyer. 

Agent Middlemen - People such as brokers, manufacturers representatives, and sales agents that search for customers and may negotiate on behalf of the producer but do not take title to the goods. 

AIDA - Sales process acronym that stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action... "get the prospect's attention, gain their interest, create desire and encourage them to act by moving forward with the purchase."

Alliance Income - A company can invite business partners to share costs in setting up the Web site and offer them free advertising. 

Alliances - From trying to win alone to forming networks of partner firms.

Allocation - Allocation is breaking down large homogeneous collections into smaller ones to meet the requirements of various markets. 

Allocating - Helps evaluate customer profitability and advises on allocating scarce products to customers in times of product shortages. 

Allowances - Provides an indirect benefit to middlemen to carry merchandise or to increase sales efforts. 

Alpha Testing -The name given to testing the product within the firm to see how it performs in different applications.

Alternative Choice Close - A type of close that does not give the prospect a choice of buying, or not buying, but instead asks which one, or how many items, he or she wishes to buy.

Ambush Marketing - The act of marketing a product or service in conjunction with an event or other brand without paying for the right... typically used when an official sponsorship opportunity is available but a company doesn't wish to pay the fee for the sponsorship or another company has already purchased the sponsorship.

Amortization - The gradual, systematic payment of a debt, such as a mortgage or other loan, in installments of principal and interest for a definite time, so that at the end of that time, the debt will have been paid in full.

Analogy - A comparison between two different situations that have something in common. Usually an everyday situation is used to illustrate something in the new situation.

“Anchoring” Trend - The tendency to use ancient practices as anchors or support for modern lifestyles: aromatherapy, meditation, yoga, and Eastern religions.

Annual-plan control - Purpose is to examine whether the planned results are being achieved; prime responsibility of top and middle management. 

Annual Planning Stages - Business planning, usually management will adopt on of three basic approaches.

1. Top-down planning - where top management sets goals and plans for all the lower levels of management.

2. Bottom-up planning - where various units of the organization prepare their own goals and plans, based on the best they think they can do, and send them to upper management for approval.

3. Goals-down-plans-up planning - top management takes a broad look at the company's opportunities and requirements and set corporate goals for the year.

Anti-Merger Act (1950) - Amended Section 7 of the Clayton Act by broadening the power to prevent inter-corporate acquisitions where the acquisition may have a substantially adverse effect on competition.

Articles of Incorporation - A document filed with a U.S. state by the founders of a corporation. After approving the articles, the state issues a Certificate of Incorporation; the two documents together become the Charter of Incorporation. 

Anticipative Marketer - Looks ahead into what needs customers may have in the near future.

Anticipatory Pricing – Is when companies often raise their prices by more than the cost increase, in anticipation of further inflation or government price controls.

Approvers - People who authorize the proposed actions of deciders or buyers.

Areas of Dominant Influence – When a company has to decide how to allocate its advertising budget over space as well as over time, the company makes “national buys” when it places ads on national TV networks or in nationally circulated magazines. It makes “spot buys” when it buys TV time in just a few markets or in regional editions of magazines. These markets are called Areas of Dominant Influence (ADIs) or Designated Marketing Areas (DMAs), and ads reach a market 40 to 60 miles from a city center. The company makes “local buys” when it advertises in local newspapers, radio, or outdoor sites.

Area Market Potential – When companies face the problem of selecting the best territories and allocating their marketing budget optimally among these territories. Therefore, they need to estimate the market potential of different cities, states, and nations. Two major methods of assessing area market potential are available: the market-buildup method, which is used primarily by business marketers, and the multiple-factor index method, which is used primarily by consumer marketers.

Area Market Specialists - Regional or local marketing managers to support the sales efforts in high-volume markets.

Arm’s-Length Price - The price charged by other competitors for the same or a similar product.

ASP - An acronym that stands for Application Service Provider... a software solution used by the customer where the solution itself is developed, hosted and managed by an outside company... generally implies a lower implementation cost.

Aspirational Groups – Reference groups expose an individual to new behaviors and lifestyles, and influence product and brand choices. Aspirational groups are those a person hopes to join; dissociative groups are those whose values or behavior an individual rejects.

Asset - Anything having commercial or exchange value that is owned by a business, institution or individual. A business' assets might include its real estate, equipment inventory, intellectual assets such as copyrights or trademarks, and accounts receivable. 

Asset Turnover - The return on assets is the product of two ratios, the profit margin and the asset turnover.

Assignability - The ability to assign (or sell) an income stream to another individual or business. 

Assignee - The person or business entity who is given, obtains, or buys the right to an asset. 

Assignment - The transfer of the rights, title or interest of any debt instrument that is properly owned by another party. 

Assignor - The person giving or selling an asset, and subsequently, forfeiting rights to that asset.

Assorting - The building up of a heterogeneous collection from various sources to meet the requirements of some market. 

Assumptive Close - Old school closing approach where the salesperson assumes the prospect is buying and moves directly to a request for a signed contract and/ or payment.

Atmosphere - Are environments that are designed to create or reinforce the buyer's leanings toward purchase or consumption of the product.

Attention - A function of the amount and strength of competing stimuli in the immediate environment, the receiver's traits, the receiver's media-using habits and the situational context.  

Attitude - A person's enduring favorable or unfavorable cognitive evaluations, emotional feelings, and action tendencies toward some object or idea.

Attracting Customers – To generate leads, the company develops ads and places them in media that will reach new prospects; it sends direct mail and makes phone calls to possible new prospects; it sends direct mail and makes phone calls to possible new prospects; its salespeople participate in trade shows where they find new leads; and so on. All this activity produces a list of suspects.  The next task is to identify which suspects are really good prospects, by interviewing them, checking on their financial standing, and so on.

Attribute Competition – Competition produces a continuous round of new product attributes. Customer expectations are progressive. This fact underlines the strategic importance of a maintaining the lead in introducing new attributes. Each new attribute, if successful, creates a competitive advantage for the firm, leading to temporarily higher-than-average market share and profits. The market leader must learn to routinize the innovation process.  There are four approaches.

1. A customer-survey process: The company asks consumers what benefits they would like added to the product and their desire level for each.
2. An intuitive process: Entrepreneurs get hunches and undertake product development without much marketing research.
3. A dialectical process: Innovators should not march with the crowd.
4. A needs-hierarchy process: The innovator’s task is to assess when the market is ready to satisfy a higher-order need.

Attribute Listing – List the attributes of an object, then modify each attribute.

Attributes - A characteristic of a person or thing. 

Attribution Theory - This theory says that when people are uncertain they develop their attitudes largely from making choices in actual situations rather than coming to these situations with strongly set attitudes.  

Audience Size – Audience size has several possible measures:

• Circulation: The number of physical units carrying the advertising.
• Audience: The number of people exposed to the vehicle.
• Effective audience: the number of people with target audience characteristics exposed to the vehicle.
• Effective ad-exposed audience: The number of people with target audience characteristics who actually saw the ad.

Auditing – When companies periodically audit their brands’ strengths and weaknesses, and occasionally discover that it may have to reposition the brand because of changing customer preferences or new competitors. The world’s strongest brands share 10 attributes:

1. The brand excels at delivering the benefits consumers truly desire.
2. The brand stays relevant.
3. The pricing strategy is based on consumers’ perceptions of value
4. The brand is properly positioned.
5. The brand is consistent.
6. The brand portfolio and hierarchy makes sense.
7. The brand makes use of and coordinates a full repertoire of marketing activities to build equity.
8. The brand’s managers understand what the brand means to consumers.
9. The brand is given proper, sustained support.
10. The company monitors sources of brand equity.

Augmented Product - This is the totality of benefits that the person receives or experiences in obtaining the formal product.  

Availability - Goods and services that can be obtained with a reasonable amount of effort, and that consumers feel comfortable in dealing with the channel outlets.

Average costs – Average cost is the cost per unit at that level of production; it is equal to total costs divided by production.

Awareness - Adopters of new products have been observed to move through five stages:

1. Awareness:  The consumer becomes aware of the innovation but lacks information about it.

2. Interest:  The consumer is stimulated to seek information about the innovation.

3. Evaluation:  The consumer considers whether to try the innovation.

4. Trial:  The consumer tries the innovation to improve his or her estimate of its value.

5. Adoption:  The consumer decides to make full and regular use of the innovation.

Awareness Set - The brands that a consumer recalls when shopping for a particular product.

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