Marketing Glossary

Glossary
Here you will find the description of some words and phrases that pertain to the Marketing concepts in the course, and also words and phrases used in the videos and readings. If you want to add another word or expression that we missed, please suggest it in the forums. If you need to find a description of a brand used in the videos and readings, see the Brand Descriptions page.

A
Advertising

A form of marketing communication used to persuade an audience to take or continue some action, usually with respect to a commercial offering, or political or ideological support.

B
Brand equity

A phrase used in the marketing industry that describes the value of having a well-known brand name, based on the idea that the owner of a well-known brand name can generate more money from products with that brand name than from products with a less well-known name, as consumers believe that a product with a well-known name is better than products with less well-known names.[1]

Brand management

In marketing, brand management is the analysis of and planning on how that brand is perceived in the market. Developing a good relationship with the target market is essential for brand management.[2]

Brand proposition

A brand proposition is a statement about your company, product, services, etc., that clearly demonstrates to customers what benefits they can derive out of your brand [20].

Break-even analysis

The break-even point in economics, business—and specifically cost accounting—is the point at which total cost and total revenue are equal, i.e. “even”. There is no net loss or gain, and one has “broken even”, though opportunity costs have been paid and capital has received the risk-adjusted, expected return. [21]

C
Cross-functional team

A cross-functional team is a group of people with different functional expertise working toward a common goal. It may include people from finance, marketing, operations, and human resources departments. Typically, it includes employees from all levels of an organization. [22]

Cost-based pricing

Cost based pricing is one of the pricing methods of determining the selling price of a product by the company, wherein the price of a product is determined by adding a profit element (percentage) in addition to the cost of making the product.[23]

Competitor-based pricing

A pricing method that makes use of competitors’ prices for the same or similar product as basis in setting a price. This pricing method focuses on information from the market rather than production costs (cost-plus pricing) and product’s perceived value (value-based pricing).[24]

Consociality (the degree to which the members of a platform can engage in social interaction in either physical or virtual space)

Crowdsourcing

The process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.[3]

Cult of Done Manifesto

The Done Manifesto posted by Bre Pettis and Kio Stark is a set of working rules based on a sense of urgency. No time for careful deliberation, move on.

Customer co-creation

The idea that customers can help design and develop products in addition to buying them. Such activity really helps enhance new product development activities.

Customer segmentation

The practice of dividing a customer base into groups of individuals that are similar in specific ways relevant to marketing, such as age, gender, interests, spending habits, and so on.[5]

D
Digital authenticity

The degree to which a product’s online promotion provides customers with a genuine portrayal of its origins, features, and benefits (as well as its limitations). Authentic promotional campaigns typically focus on telling a story rather than making a claim. This story is usually connected to the brand in a genuine manner and provides customers with a sense that the brand has a purpose other than just making money.

Digital marketing

The marketing of products or services using digital channels to reach consumers. The key objective is to promote brands and product benefits through various forms of digital media such as the Internet, mobile phones, and social media.

Distribution

Product distribution is the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption by a consumer or business user, using direct means or using indirect means with intermediaries.

Doppelgänger brand image

A doppelgänger brand image is a family of disparaging images and stories about a brand that are circulated in popular culture by a loosely organized network of consumers, antibrand activists, bloggers, and opinion leaders in the news and entertainment media.

E
Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

As the most popular theory about persuasion, ELM suggests that there are two main routes to persuasion: (1) the central route, which is cognitive in nature and (2) the peripheral route, which is more emotional in nature.

F
FUH2 Campaign

This creative viral internet campaign began in 2008 in response to General Motor’s marketing of the Hummer SUV. In the mid-2000s, General Motors tried to position this brand as the ultimate 4-wheel drive vehicle capable of taking on any challenge, and used the slogan, “Like Nothing Else.”

Fused deposition modeling

An additive manufacturing technology commonly used for modeling, prototyping, and production applications. It is one of the techniques used for 3D printing.[6]

Freemium Model

Freemium, a portmanteau of the words “free” and “premium”, is a pricing strategy by which a product or service is provided free of charge, but money (a premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical (offline) goods that expand the functionality of the free version of the software.[25]

G
Generic product

Generic brands of consumer products (often supermarket goods) are distinguished by the absence of a brand name, instead identified solely by product characteristics and identified by plain, usually black-and-white packaging. Generally, they imitate more expensive branded products, competing on price.[26]

H
I
Intangible good

An intangible good is a good that is intangible, meaning that it cannot be touched, as opposed to a physical good (an object). Digital goods, such as downloadable music and mobile apps, or virtual goods used in virtual economies are all examples of intangible goods.[7]

J
K
L
M
Marginal costs

In economics and finance, marginal cost is the change in the total cost that arises when the quantity produced has an increment by unit. That is, it is the cost of producing one more unit of a good.[8]

Market share

Market share is the percentage of a market (defined in terms of either units or revenue) accounted for by a specific entity.[9]

Multiple sclerosis

It is a demyelinating disease in which the insulating covers of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord are damaged.[27]

N
New Retail

A collection of strategies (both physical and digital) that physical retailers are using to react to the challenges of operating in a digital world.

O
P
Pareto Principle

This principle comes from the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who found, back in 1896, that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. Since this time, this principle has become known as the 80/20 rule and has been found to apply to a large number of phenomenon. For example, 80% of the world’s income is controlled by 20% of its population.[10]

Pay What You Want (PWYW)

A pricing strategy that allows customers to name their own price.

Persuasion

A marketing process that seeks to change a person’s attitude or behavior towards an offering. One of the most common forms of persuasion is advertising.

Placement

Placement aspect of the marketing mix focuses on making a product conveniently accessible to potential customers. It involves the physical movement of the product from a manufacturer through a series of marketing channel intermediaries ending with an independent retailer. Placement involves the important retailing function of displaying the product upon its shelves.

Price comparison tools

Price comparison tools have allowed pricing to move from prices revealed at the point of purchase to prices negotiated at the point of consideration. Price comparison has become easier for customers armed with a smartphone and a price search app such as Price Grabber or RedLaser. Leveraging these price comparison tools, customers can instantly compare prices on a physical retailer’s shelf with prices for the exact same product at Amazon.com and a large number of other online retailers.

Price segmentation

A suitable strategy if you have a narrow product range and can identify groups of prospects who would buy if the price was lower or who would be prepared to pay a higher price in return for a factor that they felt added value to the product.[11]

Pricing strategy

A pricing strategy is a firm’s basic approach to how it prices its products. Pricing captures the value of the product for the firm. Thus, having a good pricing strategy is critical for a firm’s profitability and very survival. The development of a pricing strategy often entails considering a product’s cost of production, what customers are willing to pay, and the prices of competing products.

Product

A product is really anything that fulfills a customer need or want. It is a good, service, or idea that has a distinctive selling proposition consisting of tangible or intangible attributes.

Product development

Product development is the process of designing, creating, and marketing new products or services to benefit customers. Sometimes referred to as new product development, the discipline is focused on developing systematic methods for guiding all the processes involved in getting a new product to market.[12]

Product segmentation

To operate a product segmentation strategy, carry out research to identify groups of customers who want benefits or levels of functionality that are not available currently in a product category. By creating different versions of a product, you can match those customers’ needs more precisely.

Promotion

Promotion covers the methods of communication that a marketer uses to provide information about its product. This information – both verbal and visual – is persuasive in nature, appeals to customers’ intellect or emotions, and influences them to buy your product instead of your competitor’s.

Premium Pricing

Premium pricing (also called image pricing or prestige pricing) is the practice of keeping the price of one of the products or service artificially high in order to encourage favorable perceptions among buyers, based solely on the price.[28]

Price elasticity

Price elasticity of demand (PED or Ed), or elasticity, is the degree to which the desire for something changes as its price rises. [29]

Prosumer

A prosumer is a person who consumes and produces a product. [30]

Q
Quad

An open grassy area located on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) campus. It is the heart of the campus. Many activities from playing Frisbee to chatting with friends, napping to studying can be taken place there.

R
Research Online Purchase Offline (ROPO)

Research online, purchase offline (ROPO), also research online, buy offline (ROBO) or Online-to-Store (O2S-Factor), is a new trend in buying behavior where customers research relevant product information to qualify their buying decision, before they actually decide to buy their favorite product in the local store.[19]

Retail

Retail is the process of selling consumer goods and/or services to customers through multiple channels of distribution to earn a profit.

Rule of 1

Typically only about 1% of all submissions will be useful enough to implement.

Radical innovation

Radical innovation is an invention that destroys or supplants an existing business model. Unlike architectural or incremental innovation, radical innovation blows up the existing system or process and replaces it with something entirely new.[31]

Reference prices

A reference price (RP) is the price that a purchaser announces that it is willing to pay for a good or service. [32]

S
Selective Laser Sintering (SLS)

An additive manufacturing technique that uses a laser as the power source to sinter powdered material (typically metal), aiming the laser automatically at points in space defined by a 3D model, binding the material together to create a solid structure.[13]

Shopper marketing

Shopper marketing is “understanding how one’s target consumers behave as shoppers, in different channels and formats, and leveraging this intelligence to the benefit of all stakeholders, defined as brands, consumers, retailers, and shoppers.”

Showrooming

The practice of examining merchandise in a traditional brick and mortar retail store or other offline setting and then buying it online, sometimes at a lower price. Online stores often offer lower prices than their brick and mortar counterparts because they do not have the same overhead cost.[14]

Social recognition

Public acknowledgement of a person’s status or merits (achievements, virtues, service, etc.)

Stage-Gate method

The Stage-Gate method from Robert G. Cooper is an approach that can be used to make the product development process more effective. It is a blueprint for managing the new product process from an idea to launching a product. Each stage consists of a set of certain cross functional and parallel activities which must be successfully completed prior to obtaining management approval to proceed to the next stage of product development. The entrance to each stage is called a gate.[15]

Stereolithography

An additive manufacturing or 3D printing technology used for producing models, prototypes, patterns, and production parts up one layer at a time by curing a photo-reactive resin with a UV laser or another similar power source.[16]

Sharing Economy

The sharing economy is a way of distributing goods and services that differs from the traditional model of corporations hiring employees and selling products to consumers. [33]

T
Tangible good

Tangible goods are physical products defined by the ability to be touched. They are distinct from intangible goods, as well as services like a spa treatment [17]

3D printing

3D printing (or additive manufacturing, AM) is any of various processes used to make a three-dimensional object.

U
User-Generated Content

User-Generated Content occurs when a product’s customers create and disseminate online ideas about a product or the firm that markets it. These ideas are often in the form of text but also come in other forms such as music, photos, or videos. UGC has three key characteristics: (1) The contribution is by users of a product rather than the firm that sells this product; (2) it is creative in nature and the user adds something new; (3) it is posted online and generally accessible.

V
Value proposition

Value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered. It’s the primary reason a prospect should buy from you. It explains how your product solves customers’ problems, improves their situation (relevancy), or delivers specific benefits (quantified value).

Value-based pricing

Value-based price (also value optimized pricing) is a pricing strategy which sets prices primarily, but not exclusively, according to the perceived or estimated value of a product or service to the customer rather than according to the cost of the product or historical prices. [34]

W
Webrooming

The practice of researching items online and then purchasing them in-store, is the reverse of showrooming – browsing for items in a store and purchasing them online later.[18]

X
Y
Z
Zero Price Effect

It is a phenomenon whereby the demand for a good, service, or commodity is significantly greater at a price of exactly zero compared to a price even slightly greater than zero. Graphically, a zero price effect appears as a discontinuity in the demand curve at a price of zero. [35]