glossary

'D'

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Dealer Tests - To insure that dealers find the packages attractive and easy to handle. 

Debt - Consumers expenditures are affected by savings, debt, and credit availability. Marketers must pay careful attention to major changes in incomes, cost of living, interest rates, savings, and borrowing patterns because they can have a strong impact on business, especially for companies whose products are geared to high-income and price-sensitive consumers.

Debt Instrument - Future payment or series of payments, or a debt that one party owes to another party. Also known as income streams or cash flow instruments. 

Debtor - One who owes something and makes payments to a creditor.

Deception - Some direct marketers design mailers and write copy intended to misleads buyers. They may exaggerate product size, performance, claims, or the “retail price.” The Federal Trade Commission receives thousands of complaints each year about fraudulent investment scams or phony charities.

Deciders - Those persons actually involved in making the decision to buy.

Decline Stage - Eventually demand for the present products will begin to decrease, and the market will enter the decline stage. Either society’s total need level declines or a new technology replaces the old.

Declining Demand - Every organization, sooner or later, faces declining demand for one or more of its products. The marketer must analyze the causes of the decline, and determine whether demand can be re-stimulated by new target markets, by changing product features, or by more effective communication. The marketing task is to reverse declining demand through creative remarketing.

Decoder Process - Receipt and translation of information by the receiver.

Deep Assortment - Representing a given homogenous product family in depth, drawing on many producers' outputs.

Default - The omission or failure to perform or fulfill a legal duty, obligation, or promise (i.e. to pay a debt).

Definition of Marketing - Marketing is a societal process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering, and freely exchanging products and services of value with others.

Degree - In the context of social networks, degree is the number of other people that person is directly connected to.

Delinquent - In default, not on time, past due on obligation, note, invoice or other accounts receivable.

Demand Fluctuations - The demand for business goods and services tends to be more volatile than the demand for consumer goods and services. A given percentage increase in consumer demand can lead to a much larger percentage increase in the demand for plant and equipment necessary to produce the additional output.

Demand Forecasting - Estimates made of the future course of market demand.

Demand Measurement - The conversion of the various qualitative understandings of a market into quantitative estimates of specific demand by product, territory, and type of customer.

Demarketing - The task of reducing overall demand.  It deals with attempts to discourage customers in general or a certain class of customers in particular on either a temporary or a permanent basis.

Demographic Environment - The first macro-environmental force that marketers monitor is population, because people make up markets. Marketers are keenly interested in the size and growth rate of population in cities, regions, and nations; age distribution, and ethnic mix; educational levels; household patterns; and regional characteristics and movements.

Demographic Segmentation - The market is divided into groups on the basis of variables such as age, family size, family life cycle, gender, income, occupation, education, religion, race, generation, nationality, and social class. Demographic variables are the most popular bases for distinguishing customer groups.

Demonstration - The process of showing a product to a prospect and letting them use it, if possible.

Density of a Network - The number of actual ties out of all of those possible in a particular network.

Department Store - Several product lines—typically clothing, home furnishings, and household goods—with each line operated as a separate department managed by specialist buyers or merchandisers.

Depression Cohort - Each generation is profoundly influenced by the times in which it grows up-the music, movies, politics, and defining events of that period. Demographers call these groups' cohorts. Depression cohorts are shaped by hard times and the Great Depression; aged 79-88 in 2000. This cohort lacked jobs when they were coming of age; financial security is one of their core values.

Derived Demand - Demand that is linked to consumer demand for other products.

Developmental Marketing - The process of effectively transforming latent demand into actual demand.

Differentiate - To communicate specific and valuable benefits of a product or service that a prospect or customer cannot experience elsewhere.

Differentiated Marketing - When a firm decides to go after several market segments, developing an effective offer and marketing mix for each.

Differentiation - All products can be differentiated to some extent, but not all brand differences are meaningful or worthwhile. A difference will be stronger to the extent that it satisfies the following criteria:

• Important - The difference delivers a highly valued benefit to a sufficient number of buyers.

• Distinctive - The difference is delivered in a distinctive way.

• Superior - The difference is superior to other ways of obtaining the benefit.

• Preemptive - The difference cannot be easily copied by competitors.

• Affordable - The buyer can afford to pay for the difference.

• Profitable - The company will find it profitable to introduce the difference.

Diffused Preferences - Reveals a market where all the consumers' preferences may be scattered fairly evenly throughout the space with no concentration.

Diffusion of Innovations - The process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among members of a social system.

Direct Denial - The method of overcoming objections through the use of facts, logic, and tact.

Direct Marketing Takes Four Major Forms –

1.      Mail-order selling - mailed letters, fold outs, catalogs.

2.      Mass-media selling - direct response ads in newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV.

3.      Telephone selling.

4.      On-premise selling - door to door, home demonstration parties.

Direct Marketers - seek a measurable response, typically a customer order. Many direct marketers use direct marketing to build a long-term relationship with the customer, including sending birthday cards, information materials, or small premiums to select customers, frequency award programs & club programs.

Direct Purchasing - Business buyers often buy directly form manufacturers rather than through intermediaries, especially items that are technically complex or expensive.

Direct Question - A question that, by and large, can be answered with a yes or no response, or at most by a very short response consisting of a few words.

Direct Question Approach - A question approach used to clarify customers’ needs when they identify the product they wish to buy.

Direct Response Advertising - Some companies prepare 30-60 minute infomercials, which resemble documentaries and carry testimony from satisfied users of the product or service, including a toll-free number for ordering or getting further information.

Direct Sales Force - Consists of full or part time paid employees who work exclusively for the company. 

Direct Sellers - Sellers that sell face-to-face to consumers (typically in their homes) who use products for their personal use.

Direct Selling (also called multi-level selling, network marketing) - Is a $9 billion industry, with over 600 companies selling door-to-door or at home sales parties. The distributor’s compensation includes a percentage of sales of those the distributor recruits as well as earnings on direct sales to customers. These direct selling firms, now finding fewer consumers at home, are developing multi-distribution strategies.

Direct Suggestion - An approach that suggests prospects buy, rather than telling them to buy.

Direct Survey Questions – Customers are asked to place a direct dollar value on one or more changes in the market offering.

Directing - The action of dealing with people positively and persuasively from a leadership position.

Disagreement Signals - Signs that the prospect does not agree with the presentation or does not think the product is beneficial.

Discount Store - Standard merchandise sold at lower prices with lower margins & higher volumes. Discount retailing has moved into specialty merchandise stores, such as discount sporting-goods, electronics, and bookstores.

Discretionary Responsibility - Actions taken by a company that are purely voluntary and guided by its desire to make social contributions not mandated by economics, law, or ethics.

Discrimination - A person has learned to recognize differences in sets of similar stimuli and can adjust responses accordingly.

Display Allowance - Compensates them for carrying a special product display.

Distribution - The channel structure used to transfer products from an organization to its customers.

Distribution Channel - The companies through which a product "flows" from manufacturer to the end user.

Diversification - Makes sense for a company if the task-marketing system does not show much additional opportunity for growth or profit or if the opportunities outside of the present task-marketing system are superior.  Types:

A)    Concentric diversification - consists of the company's seeking to add new  products that have technological and/or marketing synergies with the existing  product line; these products normally will appeal to new classes of customers.

B)     Horizontal diversification - consists of the company's seeking to add new products that could appeal to its current customers though technologically un-related to its current product line.

C)    Conglomerate diversification - consists of the company's seeking to add new products for new classes of customers either because such a move promises to offset some deficiency or because it represents a great environmental opportunity; whichever the case, the new products have no relationship to the company's current technology, products, or markets.

Diversity - The difference between people due to age, religion, race, gender, and so on.

Diversity Marketing - A practice which revealed that different ethnic and demographic niches did not always respond favorably to mass-market advertising.

Divisibility - The degree to which the innovation can be tried on a limited basis.

Dodge Method - Neither denies, answers, nor ignores the objection, but simply temporarily dodges the objection.

Dominate Firm's Objective - To be number one.

1)      find ways to make the total market grow larger

2)      protect the current market share through good offensive and defensive strategies

3)      expand the current market share further

Doubtful Positioning - Buyers may find it hard to believe the brand claims in view of the product’s features, price or manufacturer.

Down-Aging - The tendency for older people to act and feel younger than their ages: Youthful clothes & hair coloring, adult toys, adventure vacations.

Downmarket Stretch - A company positioned in the middle market may want to introduce a lower-priced line for any of three reasons:

1. The company may notice strong growth opportunities as a mass-retailer and attract a growing number of shoppers who want value-priced goods.

2. The company may wish to tie up lower-end competitors who might otherwise try to move up-market. If the company has been attacked by a low-end competitor, it often decides to counterattack by entering the low end of the market.

3. The company may find that the middle market is stagnating or declining.

Drag-a-Long Income - is additional income on other company products resulting from adding a product to the line.

Dramatization - The theatrical presentations of products.

Draw - A form of monetary compensation paid in advance of commissions earned and then applied against the balance of future commissions earned-- can be recoverable or non-recoverable... generally used to guarantee personal cash flow to an individual who does not earn a salary.

Drop-Error - Occurs when the company dismisses an otherwise good idea.

Dual Adaptation - It adapts both the product and the communication used in advertising and promotion.

Due Diligence - Exhaustive research on a transaction, income stream, client, and/or payor. Due diligence may involve credit checks, appraisals, UCC searches, lien searches, or on-site visits with clients.

Dumping - Occurs when a company charges either less than its costs or less than it charges in its home market, in order to enter or win a market.

Durable Goods - Tangible goods that normally survive many uses.

Dyad - A tie between two nodes in a network. The basic unit of analysis of social networks.

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