Whether you're looking for an obscure phrase or your basic marketing definition, the AMA Dictionary has it all! Originating from the print version in 1995, we're always adding new terms to keep marketers up to date in the ever-evolving marketing profession.
| Term | Definition | See Also |
|---|
| C.B.D. | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| C.F.R. | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| C.I.A. | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| C.I.F. | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| C.O.D. | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| cable television | A method of distributing television signals by means of coaxial or fiber-optic cables. Cable subscribers can receive a wide variety of cable television channels, and some cable systems enable subscribers to both receive and send information by means of the cable connection between the cable system office and individual households. Some cable television services are even including telephone connection capabilities as an option available to subscribers. | |
| Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competiti | An act containing complex, interrelated provisions that revise rules concerning cable television, broadcast television, and new television technologies. The Federal Communications Commission is required to prescribe regulations and resolve disputes. | |
| Cache | Cache is a storage area for frequently accessed information. Retrieval of the information is faster from the cache than the originating source. There are many types of cache including RAM cache, secondary cache, disk cache, and cache memory to name a few.
Source: Lazworld | |
| caching | A computer process that stores Web files for later re-use. The purpose is to save the user time by displaying Web pages without needing to re-download graphics and other elements of the page. | |
| CACM | Central American Common Market | |
| cadre | A salesperson who receives a relatively large amount of latitude, support, and attention from his or her sales manager. Cadres receive special treatment from their managers because they are perceived to be particularly competent, motivated, and trustworthy. In return for the special treatment, cadres are expected to perform assignments that are outside the formal job description. Cadres are the opposite of hired hand salespeople. | |
| CAI | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| call frequency | The number of sales calls per time period made on a particular customer. Comment: The call frequencies assigned to customers are used by salespeople to plan their own route and sales call schedules. | |
| call option | In foreign currency market, a call option gives the buyer of the call the right, but not the obligation, to buy the foreign currency up to the call's expiration date. | |
| call report | A salesperson's report of a sales call made on a customer. | |
| call system | A system of equalizing sales opportunities among salespeople--e.g., some stores rotate salespeople, giving each an equal opportunity to meet arriving customers. | |
| CALLPLAN | A decision calculus model providing a decision support system for determining the amount of time that a salesperson should spend with current customers and sales prospects. The model's parameters are calculated using subjective responses to a series of point estimate questions concerning the likely impact of various numbers of customer visits on sales from each customer (Lodish 1971). Evidence regarding the model's effectiveness has been reported by Fudge and Lodish (1977). | |
| Campaign Integration | Planning and executing a paid search campaign concurrently with other marketing initiatives, online or offline, or both. More than simply launching simultaneous campaigns. true paid search integration takes all marketing initiatives into consideration prior to launch, such as consistent messaging and image, driving offline conversions, supporting brand awareness, increasing response rates and contributing to ROI business goals.
Source: SEMPO | |
| cancellation | A notification to a vendor that a buyer does not wish to accept ordered merchandise. Also, it is merchandise declared surplus by retailers, often sold in broken lots to discount houses or liquidators. (Out-of-style or slightly damaged shoes are frequently sold as "cancellation shoes".) | |
| canned sales presentation | A standardized sales presentation that includes all the key selling points arranged in the order designed to elicit the best response from the customer. | |
| canned sales talk | A prepared sales talk repeated from memory. | |
| cannibalization | The loss of sales in established products experienced by a firm resulting from its own introduction of new products that are partial or complete substitutes. That is, the new product "steals" some of the sales of the established product. | |
| Canonicalization | The process of picking the best URL when there are several choices; this usually refers to home pages. Source: matt Cutts Blog: SEO Advice. In addition, "Canonicalization is the process of converting data that has more than one possible representation in a "standard" canonical representation. This can be done to compare different representations for equivalence, to count the number of distinct data structures (e.g., in combinatorics), to improve the efficiency of various algorithms by eliminating repeated calculations, or to make it possible to impose a meaningful sorting order." Source: Wikipedia
Source: SEMPO | |
| canvasser | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| capabilities | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| capacity requirements planning (CRP) | The evaluation of planned production to determine if it can be accomplished within the capacity limitations of manufacturing facilities. A capacity load projection is completed for each item in the master production schedule. The calculated load requirement is compared to available capacity, thus determining underutilization or overutilization of facilities. | |
| capital | 1. The produced wealth that assists directly in further production and that furnishes satisfaction or gratification to the user only indirectly or incidentally, if at all. 2. The owner's investment in a business. 3. All economic goods in existence at a given period of time used by society for production. | |
| capital account | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| capital asset pricing model (CAPM) | A theory that states that the expected return on any asset or security is given by a formula. It is generally conceded in finance that the CAPM is effectively untestable. | |
| capital consumption allowance | The sum of depreciation on major capital goods plus capital goods destroyed or damaged plus depreciation on minor capital goods. | |
| capital goods | The instruments of production that make up an organization's plant and operating capacity. | |
| capital intensive | A product or an industry in which plant and equipment requirements are large relative to labor. | |
| capital turnover | The number of times total capital investment is divisible into sales; the greater this figure, the smaller the net profit on sales required to meet a given return on investment. | |
| capitalism | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| CAPM | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| CAPM approach to investment analysis | A technique that employs the CAPM equation to calculate the risk adjusted, after-tax required rate of return in the net present value equation. This approach replaces the use of the traditional weighted average cost of capital. Beta is usually estimated as the average of the betas for firms already operating (exclusively) in the market in which the investment will be made. | |
| captive market | The potential clientele of retail or service businesses located in hotels, airports, railroad stations, etc., where consumers do not have reasonable alternative sources of supply. | |
| career plateau | A situation in which the likelihood of a salesperson's receiving increased responsibility (e.g., a promotion, a bigger territory) is low. Career plateauing can lead to substantial opportunity costs for sales personnel on the company. Factors contributing to a career plateau include both personal (e.g., low motivation, feelings of job burnout) and organizational (e.g., inadequate sales training, little company growth) characteristics. | |
| CARICOM | Caribbean Economic Community | |
| carload | The shipment by rail of a full load. This usually qualifies for lower freight rate than smaller shipments. | |
| carousel | The materials handling equipment that delivers the desired item to the order picker. Typically a carousel consists of a series of bins mounted on an oval track. The entire carousel rotates, bringing the bin to the operator. | |
| carriage trade | An old expression that refers to a wealthy class of patrons accorded special services. | |
| carrier | In transportation, a car, truck, vessel, plane, helicopter, or train. | |
| carry over models | Models in which the effect of a marketing mix variable is assumed to last beyond a single time period. A transformation often applied in modeling the effect of lagged marketing expenditures (e.g., advertising expenditures in previous periods) on the current period's sales is the Koyck transformation. When it is assumed that the effect of the marketing expenditure decays geometrically over time (i.e., loses a constant proportion of its remaining impact in each subsequent period), then the Koyck transformation allows the analyst to estimate all of those lagged marketing expenditure effects using a single one-period-lagged-sales term to predict current sales. The transformation thus greatly simplifies the task of estimating lagged effects in sales response models. The validity of the assumptions required for the transformation to be appropriate has, however, been challenged. For reviews see Parsons and Schultz (1976, Chapter 8) or Lilien and Kotler (1983, Chapter 4). | |
| carrying charge | The sum paid for credit service on certain charge accounts. It is an interest usually charged on the unpaid balance. | |
| cartel | A combination of separate firms who collusively set prices and control output with the intent of maximizing mutual profits. | |
| cash before delivery (C.B.D) | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| cash cow | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| cash discount | A premium for advance payment at a rate that is usually higher than the prevailing rate of interest. It also is a reduction in price allowed the buyer for prompt payment. | |
| cash excess | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| cash flow | The cash generated by after-tax earnings plus depreciation minus cash used within the business. Or more simply, the movement of cash into and out of the business. Where the "inflows" (receipts) have exceeded the "out-flows" (disbursements) in a specified period of time, the cash flow is said to be positive and provides additional net cash. When the disbursements exceed the receipts in a specified period of time, the cash flow is said to be negative and reduces net cash. | |
| cash in advance (C.I.A) | Payment before receipt or delivery of goods or services. Used interchangeably with cash before delivery, and applies in the same instance as the latter. | |
| cash on delivery | The practice of collecting for the price of the merchandise plus the relevant transportation charges. It is commonly referred to as C.O.D. | |
| cash register bank | An assortment of change for the use of the salesperson or transaction station operator. It is prepared at the end of the day by the person operating a cash register or prepared by a cashier for the cash register operator. | |
| cash terms | The payment of cash for the purchase of goods, usually within a certain time period--e.g., 10 to l4 days. | |
| cash with order (CWO) | The seller demands that cash covering the cost of merchandise and delivery accompany the customer's order; cash before delivery and cash in advance apply similarly. | |
| cashless economy | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| catalog | A publication containing the descriptions or details of a number or range of products used to increase mail order sales, phone sales, and/or in-store traffic of the sender. | |
| catalog showroom | A retail outlet that consumers visit to make actual purchases of articles described in catalogs mailed to their homes or available for reference in the store. | |
| categorization | A cognitive process by which objects, events, and persons are grouped together and responded to in terms of their class membership rather than their uniqueness. | |
| category exclusivity | The right of a sponsor to be the only company within its product or service category associated with the sponsored property.
Source: IEG | |
| category killer | A type of destination store that is usually large and that concentrates on one category, thus making it possible to carry both a broad assortment and deep selection of merchandise, coupled with low price and moderate service. | |
| category manager | This manager reports to the marketing manager and is responsible for the marketing of the several brands falling under a generic product category such as coffee, dessert, and oral hygiene. This manager (companies sometimes use other titles, for example, unit business manager) is responsible for maximizing the total profit from the mix of brands in the category. This may be done by allocating funds and marketing effort according to the profit potential of each brand in the mix; also deleting weak brands and adding new brands with higher profit potential. The category manager is chosen for business as well as marketing skills and works closely (sometimes as a member of a team) with other functional managers such as production, finance, and research and development to achieve maximum profitability for the product category. | |
| category signage | A signage system that is used to call out and locate specific merchandise categories in a store. | |
| category-based processing | A cognitive process in which an individual attempts to categorize new stimuli. If a stimulus can be considered as an example of an existing category, it is evaluated by the affect associated with the category, rather than by careful consideration of its attributes (as in piecemeal processing). The category schema is the basis for evaluation. | |
| causal research | A research design in which the major emphasis is on determining a cause-and-effect relationship. | |
| Cause Marketing | Promotional strategy that links a company’s sales campaign directly to a nonprofit organization. Generally includes an offer by the sponsor to make a donation to the cause with purchase of its product or service. Unlike philanthropy, money spent on cause marketing is a business expense, not a donation, and is expected to show a return on investment.
Source: IEG | |
| cease and desist order | An order from an administrative agency or court prohibiting the continuation of a particular course of conduct. | |
| Celler-Kefauver Act (1950) | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| census | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| census block | Usually a well-defined rectangular area bounded by streets or roads. However, it may be irregular in shape and may be bounded by physical features such as railroads or streams. Census blocks do not cross boundaries of countries, tracts, or block numbering areas. | |
| census metropolitan area (CMA) | The main labor market area of an urbanized core having at least 100,000 population. Each constituent municipality has at least 40 percent of its labor force working in the urbanized core. | |
| census tract | A small, relatively permanent area into which metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) and certain other areas are divided for the purpose of providing statistics for small areas. When census tracts are established, they are designed to be homogeneous with respect to population characteristics, economic status, and living conditions. Census tracts generally have between 2,500 and 8,000 residents. | |
| center of influence method | A prospecting method used by salespeople in which the salesperson cultivates well-known, influential people who are willing to provide sales leads. | |
| centers of commerce | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| central business district (CBD) | For statistical purposes, this area is specifically defined for individual cities. Because there are not generally accepted rules for determining what a CBD area should include or exclude, the U. S. Bureau of the Census did not provide rigid specifications for defining the CBD but provided a general characterization of the CBD, describing it as an area of very high land valuation; an area characterized by a high concentration of retail businesses, offices, theaters, hotels, service businesses; and an area of high traffic flow; and required that the CBD ordinarily should be defined to follow existing census tract lines; i.e., to consist of one or more whole census tracts. | |
| central buying | A type of central market representation in which the authority and responsibility for merchandise selection and purchase are vested in a central market office, rather than in the individual store units represented by the central office. It is also referred to as consolidated buying. | |
| central market | A place where a large number of suppliers are concentrated. The location may be a simple area, such as a merchandise mart, or it may be located in the same general section of a city. For example, New York is still the primary central market for many types of merchandise, especially women's wear. | |
| central office edit | The thorough and exacting scrutiny and correction of completed data collection forms, including a decision about what to do with the data. | |
| central place theory | 1. (retailing definition) A model that ranks communities according to the assortment of goods available in each. At the bottom of the hierarchy are communities that represent the smallest central places (centers of commerce). They provide the basic necessities of life. Further up the hierarchy are the larger central places, which carry all goods and services found in lower-order central places plus more specialized ones that are not necessary. 2. (geography definition) A normative theory that explains the size, number, and spacing of distribution centers to serve a dispersed population. | |
| central route to persuasion | One of two types of cognitive processes by which persuasion occurs. In the central route, consumers focus on the product messages in the ad, interpret them, form beliefs about product attributes and consequences, and integrate these meanings to form brand attitudes and intentions. | |
| centralized adjustment system | A centralized office that handles complaints, whether placed by telephone, mail, or a personal visit to the store. It would not apply to routine matters, such as the return of merchandise in good condition and within the limits of the store's policy governing approval sales, exchanges, and so on. | |
| centralized management | The practice of referring matters for decision to higher levels of management, particularly to corporate management. | |
| centralized sales organization | A sales force, reporting to corporate or group management, that sells the products of two or more divisions. This may be appropriate when the products of the divisions are distributed through the same channels. | |
| CERCLA | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| certificate of origin | A document that specifies the origin of a product. | |
| chain discount | A series of trade discount percentages or their total--e.g., if a list (catalog) price denotes $100 and is subject to a 40-15-15 discount to dealers, the total or chain discount is $56.65--i.e., $100-40% = $60, $60-157o = $51, $51-15% - $43.35. | |
| chain of command | | |
| chain store | A store that is a single store unit of a chain store system. | |
| chain store system | A group of retail stores of essentially the same type, centrally owned and with some degree of centralized control of operation. The term chain store may also refer to a single store as a unit of such a group. | |
| chain wholesaler | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| chance constrained programming | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| channel control | The actual impact that a channel member achieves on an associated channel member's beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. | |
| channel cooperation | The willingness of channel members to work together to ensure important channel functions are performed. | |
| channel effectiveness | A channel performance dimension based on how well the channel satisfies customer needs and wants, such as for lot size, delivery time, location convenience, and assortment breadth. | |
| channel efficiency | A channel performance dimension focusing on how well the firm minimizes costs associated with performing necessary channel functions. | |
| channel equity | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| channel flows | The marketing functions performed by manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, and other channel members within the channel. Eight universal channel flows that have been identified include physical possession, ownership, promotion, negotiation, financing, risking, ordering, and payment. | |
| channel functions | The job tasks or activities that need to be performed in the channel. | |
| channel member commitment | The degree to which a channel relationship is stable, loyalty has been built, and each channel member is willing to make sacrifices to maintain the exchange. | |
| channel member dependence | A channel member's need to maintain a particular channel relationship in order to achieve desired goals. | |
| channel member satisfaction | A channel member's affective state reflecting its overall approval or disapproval of a channel relationship with another firm. | |
| channel of distribution | An organized network (system) of agencies and institutions which, in combination, perform all the functions required to link producers with end customers to accomplish the marketing task. | |
| channel of distribution model | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| channel performance | An outcome measure of the channel of distribution. The performance of a distribution channel can be assessed by considering a number of performance dimensions, including channel effectiveness, channel efficiency, channel productivity, and channel profitability. | |
| channel power | The ability of a particular channel member to control or influence the decision making and behavior of another channel member, or one channel member's potential for influence with another channel member. | |
| channel productivity | A channel performance dimension based on the degree to which the channels' total investment in the various inputs necessary to achieve a given distribution objective can be optimized in terms of outputs. | |
| channel profitability | A channel performance dimension based on the financial performance of channel members in terms of ROI, liquidity, leverage, growth in sales and profits, etc. | |
| channel specialization | The channel members' choice of unique positions in the channel based on their capacities, interests, goals, expectations, values, and frames of references. Hence, each performs those tasks (participates in those channel flows) which it can perform at a comparative advantage. | |
| checking-list item | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| checklist | A memory-jogger list of items, used to remind an analyst to think of all relevant aspects. It finds frequent use as a tool of creativity in concept generation and as a factor-consideration list in concept screening. | |
| cherry picking | A buyer selection of only a few items from one vendor's line and others from another line, failing to purchase a complete line or classification of merchandise from one resource. It also sometimes describes a customer's tendency to buy only items on sale. | |
| child protection | A term covering the totality of measures necessary for a child's physical, moral, and mental well-being. | |
| Child Protection Act (1966) | This act amended the Federal Hazardous Substances Act by stating toys and other children's articles that contained hazardous substances were banned. | |
| choice | Choice involves evaluating alternative actions or behaviors and forming a behavioral intention or plan to engage in the selected behavior. Choice is the outcome of purchase decision making. | |
| choice alternatives | The different behaviors considered by consumers in decision making; they are usually the products or brands considered for purchase. | |
| choice criteria | The specific attributes or consequences used by consumers to evaluate and choose from a set of alternatives. | |
| choice heuristic | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| choice rule | A method by which an individual is hypothesized to make choices or decisions. A choice rule specifies the manner in which the individual evaluates each alternative under consideration. | |
| CIM | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| CIP | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| circular routing | A method for scheduling sales calls that involves circular patterns. | |
| circulation | The number of copies of a print advertising medium that are distributed. Paid circulation refers to the number of copies that are purchased by readers. | |
| claim | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| class membership | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| class rate | All the products transported by common carriers that are classified for purposes of transportation pricing. The charge in dollars and cents per hundredweight to move a specific product classification between two locations is the class rate. | |
| classic merchandise | The merchandise that is not influenced by style changes, for which a demand virtually always exists. | |
| classical conditioning | 1. (consumer behavior definition) A process through which a previously neutral stimulus, by being paired with an unconditioned stimulus, comes to elicit a response very similar to the response originally elicited by the unconditioned stimulus. 2. (consumer behavior definition) A traditional learning approach often credited to the work of Ivan Pavlov. It is the belief that when a stimulus that elicits a response is paired with another stimulus, the second stimulus will elicit behavior similar to the original response. | |
| classical probability | A probability determined by the relative frequency with which an event occurs when an experiment is repeated under controlled conditions. | |
| classification | A grouping of merchandise into a homogeneous category usually smaller than a department. It is particularly useful for control purposes. | |
| classification control | A form of dollar inventory control in which the dollar value of each classification of goods is smaller than the total stock of the department--e.g., the sporting goods department may be divided into several classifications or dissections, such as golf, fishing, active sport, etc. | |
| Clayton Act (1914) | This act specifically outlaws discrimination in prices, exclusive and tying contracts, intercorporate stockholdings, and interlocking directorates "where the effect . . . may be to substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly." | |
| Clean Air Act (1970) | This act requires the Environmental Protection Agency to establish air-quality standards based on considerations of public health. | |
| clearance sale | An end-of-season sale to make room for new goods. It is also pushing the sale of slow-moving, shop-worn, and demonstration model goods. | |
| clearing arrangement | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| clearinghouse | The central processing location where coupons or other sales promotion offers are collected, analyzed, and sorted for payment or fulfillment. | |
| Click Bot | A program generally used to artificially click on paid listings within the engines in order to artificially inflate click amounts.
Source: SEMPO | |
| Click Fraud | Clicks on a Pay-Per-Click advertisement that are motivated by something other than a search for the advertised product or service. Click fraud may be the result of malicious or negative competitor/affiliate actions motivated by the desire to increase costs for a competing advertiser or to garner click-through costs for the collaborating affiliate. Also affects search engine results by diluting the quality of clicks.
Source: SEMPO | |
| click through | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| clickstream | The order of pages that people are visiting on the site. It is used to indicate what elements of a site are effective, and which are not. | |
| clickthrough | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| click-through | Term used to measure the number of users who clicked on a specific Internet advertisment or link. | |
| click-through rate (CTR) | The number of click-throughs per ad impression, expressed as a percentage. | |
| client | The term used to indicate an advertiser who is being served by an advertising agency. | |
| Client-Side Tracking | Client-side tracking entails the process of tagging every page that requires tracking on the Web site with a block of JavaScript code. This method is cookie based (available as first or third party cookies) and is readily available to companies who do not own or manage their own servers.
Source: SEMPO | |
| Cloaking | Cloaking describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees. This technique is abused by spammers for keyword stuffing. Cloaking is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Source: Lazworld | |
| close | The culmination of a sales presentation in which a salesperson attempts to get a customer to commit to buying a product or service. | |
| closed bid | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| closed stock | Items sold only in sets, with no assurance to the customer that the same pattern and quality can be bought at any later time. Thus there is no provision for replacing broken pieces. | |
| closed-door discount house | A type of discount store that sells only to consumers who purchase a membership card. | |
| close-out | An offer at a reduced price to clear slow-moving or incomplete stock. It is also an incomplete assortment, the remainder of a line of merchandise that is to be discontinued, offered at a low | |
| closing | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| cloud computing | Cloud computing refers to the growing phenomenon of users who can access their data from anywhere rather than being tied to a particular machine. | |
| club plan selling | An arrangement in which a consumer is awarded prizes or granted discount buying privileges by getting new customers to join the club. The club is the group of customers served by the selling organization, and one joins by making purchases. | |
| cluster analysis | A body of statistical techniques concerned with developing natural groupings of objects based on the relationships of the p variables describing the objects. | |
| cluster sample | A probability sample distinguished by a two-step procedure in which (1) the parent population is divided into mutually exclusive and exhaustive subsets, and (2) a random sample of subsets is selected. If the investigator then uses all of the population elements in the selected subsets for the sample, the procedure is one-stage cluster sampling; if a sample of elements is selected probabilistically from the subsets, the procedure is two-stage cluster sampling. | |
| clutter | The condition that exists when many ads or commercials are placed too closely together in space or time. | |
| clutter, advertising | The extent to which multiple messages compete for the consumers' (limited) attention. It often is used to indicate multiple competing messages in one medium (such as television) or place. | |
| CMA | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| CMSA | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| COA | Acronym for Cost of Acquisition, which is how much it costs to acquire a conversion (desired action), such as a sale.
Source: SEMPO | |
| coalitions | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| code 128 | The standard bar code carton symbology utilized in warehousing, shipping, and receiving. | |
| coding | A technical procedure by which data are categorized; it involves specifying the alternative categories or classes into which the responses are to be placed and assigning code numbers to the classes. | |
| coefficient of income sensitivity | The average percentage that sales of a product vary over a period of time relative to a one percent change in personal disposable income. | |
| coercive influence strategy | A means of communication that puts direct pressure on the target to perform a specific behavior or set of behaviors with adverse consequences of noncompliance stressed or implied and mediated by the source. | |
| COFC | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| cognition | 1. (consumer behavior definition) The sum total of an individual's beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, needs, goals, and learned reactions about some aspect of the individual's world. A cognition is the pattern of meaning of a thing. 2. (consumer behavior definition) The mental processes of interpretation and decision making, including the beliefs and meanings they create. | |
| cognitive dissonance | 1. (consumer behavior definition) A psychologically uncomfortable state produced by an inconsistency between beliefs and behaviors, producing a motivation to reduce the dissonance. 2. (consumer behavior definition) A term coined by Leon Festinger to describe the feeling of discomfort or imbalance that is presumed to be evident when various cognitions about a thing are not in agreement with each other. For example, knowledge that smoking leads to serious physical ailments is dissonant with the belief that smoking is pleasurable and the psychophysiological need to smoke. Cognitive dissonance is similar to Heider's work on Balance Theory and Osgood and Tannenbaum's Congruity Theory. Dissonance is presumed to be an uncomfortable state that the individual strives to reduce. | |
| cognitive processes | The mental activities by which external information in the environment is transformed into meanings or patterns of thought and combined to form judgments about behavior. | |
| cognitive response | The thoughts a consumer has to a persuasive message such as support arguments or counterarguments. | |
| cohort | 1. (consumer behavior definition) A fellow consumer or group of consumers grouped along some variable. For example, age cohort would be a group of consumers of approximately the same age. 2. (marketing research definition) An aggregate of individuals who experience the same event within the same time interval. | |
| COLA | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| cold-canvassing | A method of prospecting under which a salesperson calls on totally unfamiliar organizations and prospects. | |
| collaborative agreements | A cooperation strategy between companies to jointly pursue a common goal. It is also referred to as strategic alliances or global strategic partnerships. | |
| collect on delivery (C.O.D) | The buyer must make payment for the purchase at time of delivery of goods. It is considered a poor substitute for cash before delivery or cash in advance because if the purchaser refuses, the seller incurs return freight charges and any deterioration of the product in the process. | |
| collect rate shipment | A freight bill is a carrier's method of charging for transportation services. If it is collect, the buyer is responsible and must pay transport costs upon arrival of the shipment. | |
| Collinearity | A bias in statistical procedure due to the correlation of multiple independent variables that influence a single dependent variable. This makes it difficult to recognize which independent variable is really causing the change in the dependent variable. | |
| collusion | An agreement between competitors, made after contacting customers, concerning their relationships with the customers. | |
| color sep | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| color separation | A negative of one of the four colors (black, blue, red, and yellow) used in the four-color printing process to reproduce color photographs and other color elements. | |
| column inch | A unit of print advertising space that is one column wide and one inch in height. | |
| combination compensation plan | 1. (sales definition) A compensation plan for salespeople that combines a base salary with commissions and/or a bonus. 2. (sales definition) A sales force compensation plan that offers a base salary plus some proportion of incentive pay consisting of commissions, bonuses, or both. When salary plus commission is used, the commissions are typically tied to sales volume or profitability, just as with a straight commission plan. The only difference is that the commissions are smaller in a combination plan than when the salesperson is compensated solely by commission. | |
| combination export management firm | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| Comment | The text contained within a "comment" tag in a web page. "Comments" are used in a variety of situations, such as communication between web developers and Cascading Style Sheets.
Source: SEMPO | |
| commercial | The name used to indicate an advertising message in the radio, broadcast television, and cable television media. | |
| commercial auction | An agent business unit that effects the sale of goods through an auctioneer, who, under specified rules, solicits bids or offers from buyers and has the power to accept the highest bids of responsible bidders and, thereby, consummates the sale. | |
| commercial pool | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| commercialization | A stage (usually the last) in the development cycle for a new product. Commonly, it is thought to begin when the product is introduced into the marketplace, but actually starts when a management commits to marketing the item. Subsequent activity during commercialization includes manufacturing and distribution, as well as promotion. It may precede the product announcement date by months. | |
| commercialized product concept statement | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| commissary store | A retail outlet owned and operated by one of the armed forces to sell food and related products to military personnel at special prices. | |
| commission | The compensation paid to salespeople based on a fixed formula related to the salesperson's activity or performance. Comment: The basis for calculating a commission is frequently a fixed percentage of sales or gross margin generated. Salespeople may have to achieve a prespecified level of performance before they are eligible to receive a commission. | |
| commission buyer of farm products | A wholesale establishment primarily engaged in buying farm products on a commission basis from farmers for others. | |
| commission buying office | An office that receives its remuneration in the form of commissions on orders placed from manufacturers rather than from retailers. | |
| commission house | An agent who usually exercises physical control over and negotiates the sale of the goods the agent handles. The agent generally enjoys broader powers as to prices, methods, and terms of the sale than does the broker, although the agent must obey instructions issued by the principal. The agent often arranges delivery, extends necessary credit, collects, deducts fees, and remits the balance to the principal. | |
| commission merchant | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| commission method of compensation | The traditional compensation method whereby advertising agencies have been paid on the basis of a percentage of the cost of media time and/or space they purchased for a client. The usual commission has been 15 percent of the total cost of the media space and time purchased. Recently, clients have been moving toward the negotiation of specific fees for the services rendered by advertising agencies. | |
| commissioner | A specialized type of buying agency that brings the buyer in contact with proper vendors in foreign markets and acts as an interpreter. Also, the commissioner facilitates the procedures of foreign exchange and shipping. | |
| committee buying | The situation whenever the buying decision is made by a group of people rather than by a single buyer. A multiunit operation is usually the type of firm that uses this procedure. | |
| commodity exchange | An organization usually owned by the member-traders that provides facilities for bringing together buyers and sellers, or their agents, of specified standard commodities for promoting trades in accordance with prescribed rules-either spot or future, or both-in these commodities. | |
| commodity product | (See also staple good.) | |
| commodity rate | A transportation rate published for specific commodities without regard to classification. Carriers commonly publish commodity rates when a large quantity of product moves between the two locations on a regular basis. When a commodity rate exists, it supersedes the corresponding class rate or exception rate. | |
| common area (of shopping center) | The area within a shopping center that is not for rental by tenants but is available for common use by all tenants, their customers, and invitees. | |
| common carrier | A company that offers to transport property for revenue at any time and any place within its operating authority without discrimination. A common carrier is authorized to conduct for-hire transportation after receiving certification as fit, willing, and able. | |
| common costs | The common or general costs that support a number of activities or profit segments. These costs cannot be traced to a product or segment. | |
| common law | This term refers to that part of the law that grew up without benefit of legislation and resulted from court decisions; these rulings then became the precedent for subsequent litigation. According to legal theory, the colonists brought the common law of England with them to America. | |
| common market | A group of countries that have harmonized tariff policies among members, established common tariffs for nonmembers and permit the free flow of factors of production among members. | |
| communication | A method of data collection involving questioning of respondents to secure the desired information using a data collection instrument called a questionnaire. | |
| community market | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| community relations | A firm's interactions with the locality in which it operates, with emphasis on disseminating company information to foster trust in the company's activities. | |
| community service activities | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| community shopping center | One of the several standard classes of shopping centers recognized by The Urban Land Institute. The community shopping center usually has a junior department store or a discount store as the major tenant. The community shopping center is typically about 150,000 square feet of store area but ranges from 100,000 square feet to 450,000 square feet. | |
| commuters' zone | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| comp | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| company image | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| company potential | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| company-related buying criteria | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| comparative advantage | 1. (global marketing definition) A theory that holds that a country can gain from trade even if it has an absolute disadvantage in the production of all goods, or, that it can gain from trade even if it has an absolute advantage in the production of all goods. 2. (economic definition) A term that relates to both the greater absolute advantages or the smaller absolute disadvantages that a country has in economic activities as compared with other countries. | |
| comparative advertising | 1. (consumer behavior definition) An advertisement in which there is specific mention or presentation of competing brand(s) and a comparison is made or implied. 2. (advertising definition) An approach to the advertising message that persuades the audience by comparing the performance of two or more brands of a product or service. The reference brand may be the previous formula used by the advertiser, an unnamed competitor of the advertiser, or a specific and named competitor of the advertiser. | |
| comparative prices | Statements in advertisements or signs comparing specific prices with previous prices, other prices, or prices goods are estimated to be worth. | |
| comparative rating scale | A scale requiring subjects to make their ratings as a series of relative judgments or comparisons rather than as independent assessments. | |
| comparison shopping | Includes two major types of activity, merchandise shopping and service shopping: 1. Merchandise shopping activities rendered by an organized shopping bureau includes checks of new items being offered by competing stores; reports on advertised promotions of competitors; comparison price shopping, etc. 2. Service shopping is normally performed by shoppers who pose as customers and report the quality of selling service on standard forms. | |
| compensation/incentive models | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| compensatory import charges | Taxes that correspond to various internal taxes, such as value-added taxes and sales taxes. | |
| compensatory integration procedure | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| compensatory model | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| compensatory process | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| compensatory rule | In evaluating alternatives, the compensatory rule suggests that a consumer will select the alternative with the highest overall evaluation on a set of choice criteria. Criteria evaluations are done separately and combined arithmetically such that positive evaluations can offset or balance (compensate for) negative evaluations. This term is also called compensatory integration procedure, compensatory model, and compensatory process. | |
| competences of firm | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| competition | The rivalry among sellers trying to achieve such goals as increasing profits, market share, and sales volume by varying the elements of the marketing mix: price, product, distribution, and promotion. It is the product of vying for customers by the pursuit of differential advantage, i.e., changing to better meet consumer wants and needs. In economic theory, various competitive states such as monopolistic competition, oligopoly, perfect competition, and monopoly are delineated based on the degree of control that sellers have over price. | |
| competitive advantage | 1. (strategic marketing definition) A competitive advantage exists when there is a match between the distinctive competences of a firm and the factors critical for success within the industry that permits the firm to outperform its competitors. Advantages can be gained by having the lowest delivered costs and/or differentiation in terms of providing superior or unique performance on attributes that are important to customers. 2. (global marketing definition) A total offer, vis-a-vis relevant competition, that is more attractive to customers. It exists when the competencies of a firm permit the firm to outperform its competitors. | |
| competitive advertising | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| competitive analysis | The analysis of factors designed to answer the question, "how well is a firm doing compared to its competitors?" The analysis goes well beyond sales and profit figures in assessing the firm's ratings on such factors as price, product, technical capabilities, quality, customer service, delivery, and other important factors compared to each of the major competitors. | |
| competitive bidding | The practice of competition in which firms submit offers or bids that detail the services and product specifications to be offered at a stated price. | |
| competitive brands | The brands that are considered as alternatives by buyers in a particular market segment; sometimes called the evoked set. Occasionally, it is used to mean a (smaller) set of products which a particular seller wishes to be competing with; more rarely, it means the full set of competitors in fact competing in a given market. | |
| competitive duplication | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| competitive environment | The number and strength of rival firms competing in the market for a product. | |
| competitive forces | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| competitive frame | The list of specific brands with which a given brand competes most directly for customers. | |
| competitive intelligence | The systematic gathering of data and information about all aspects of competitors' marketing and business activities for the purposes of formulating plans and strategies and making decisions. | |
| competitive parity budgeting | An advertising budget method whereby an advertiser chooses to use a level of spending on advertising that is similar to the advertising spending level being used by major competitors. | |
| competitive position | The position of one business relative to others in the same industry. There are a multitude of factors contributing to (and which can be used to measure) competition. The major categories are (1) market position-relative share of market, rate of change of share, variability of share across segments, perceived differentiation of quality/service/price, breadth of product, and company images; (2) economic and technological position relative cost position, capacity utilization, technological position, and patented technology, product, or process; and (3) capabilities-management strength and depth, marketing strength, distribution system, labor relations, relationships with regulators. | |
| competitive sales promotion | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| competitive strategy | A plan that attempts to define a position for the business that utilizes the competitive advantages that the business has over its competitors. | |
| complement of markup percentage | One hundred percent less markup percentage on retail. | |
| complementary products | 1. (product development definition) The products that are manufactured together, sold together, bought together, or used together. One aids or enhances the other. 2.(economic definition) Those products whose demands are positively related, i.e., an increase in quantity demanded by the market of product A results in an increase in the quantity demanded for product B. 3. (environments definition) A product that is used or sold jointly with other products, such as razors and blades, or toothbrushes and toothpaste. | |
| complete protection | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| completed fertility | The average number of births for all women in a society. | |
| completely randomized design | An experimental design in which the experimental treatments are assigned to the test units completely at random. | |
| compliance | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| compliment approach | A sales approach in which the salesperson begins the sales call by complimenting the prospect. | |
| component parts | The industrial products (or subassemblies) that either are ready for direct assembly into the finished product or require only a minor amount of further processing. Examples are switches, transistors, motors, gears, nuts, bolts, and screws. | |
| component prototype | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| compound duties | The duties that provide for specific, plus ad valorem duties to be levied on the same articles. | |
| comprehension | The cognitive processes involved in interpreting, understanding, and making sense of concepts, events, objects, and persons in the environment. | |
| Comprehensive Crime Control Act (1984) | An act establishing the United States Sentencing Commission, a permanent independent federal agency whose central purpose is to establish sentencing policies and practices "by promulgating detailed guidelines prescribing appropriate sentences for offenders convicted of federal crimes." Federal Sentencing Guidelines for application to organizations convicted of violating federal criminal law went into effect in 1991. | |
| Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation | At act designed to curtail offenses to the environment. Under CERCLA, any person who is responsible for a release or threat | |
| comprehensive layout | A detailed mock-up of a print ad presented to clients in order to gain their approval for the advertising approach before significant production costs are incurred for obtaining artwork and typesetting. | |
| computer assisted interviewing (CAI) | The conduct of surveys using computers to manage the sequence of questions and in which the answers are recorded electronically through the use of the keyboard. | |
| computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) | An approach to managerial control that focuses on the automated flow of information among participants in the stages of manufacturing. | |
| computerized buying | The use of computers in managing the purchasing process. Such tasks as calculating current inventory figures, computing economic order quantities, preparing purchase orders, developing requests for vendor quotations, expediting orders, and generating printouts of dollars spent on vendors and products can be part of the system. Some systems may have decision support models to assist in analysis of purchase alternatives. | |
| concentrated marketing | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| concentration | The process of bringing goods from various places together in one place. It includes the sorting processes of accumulation and assorting. | |
| concentration ratio | 1. (environments definition) A statistical measure, such as the percentage of a total industry's sales accounted for by the largest three firms in the industry, representing the degree of concentration of a market. 2. (strategic marketing definition) The proportion of industry shipments accounted for by the four largest firms in that industry, expressed as a percentage. This measure describes the structure of competition and yields insights into the intensity of rivalry in an industry. | |
| concentration strategy | In this strategy, a company chooses to pursue a large share of one or more submarkets rather than chasing a small share of a large market. The strategy can be somewhat risky if the demand in the submarket falls away or if one or more competitors enter the submarket. | |
| concentration, economic | A measure of the dominance of a market exercised by the top few firms in an industry. | |
| concentric diversification | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| concentric zone theory | A theory of urban land-use patterns, developed by William Burgess, that states that a city will assume the form of five concentric urban zones: the central business district, the zone in transition, the zone of working persons' homes, the zone of better residences, and the commuters' zone. Growth is accomplished by the expansion of each zone into the next zone. | |
| concept | A briefly stated idea or theme for possible use as the organizing idea for an advertisement or advertising campaign. | |
| concept evaluation stage | A stage of the new product development cycle in which ideas for new products are evaluated. Initially, the product idea may be evaluated on the basis of words, pictures, or models. The purpose of the concept evaluation stage is to determine whether an idea is worth further investment. The concept evaluation stage follows the idea generation stage. | |
| concept generation | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| concept statement | A verbal and/or pictorial statement of a concept (for a product or for advertising) that is prepared for presentation to potential buyers or users to get their reaction prior to its being implemented. Product concepts are followed by prototypes; advertising concepts by one of several forms of semifinished production. | |
| concept statement, commercialized | A term used in distinguishing two types of product concept statements. A commercialized product concept statement is prepared in an advertising format, as a persuasive statement. A noncommercialized product concept statement is prepared in neutral, nonpersuasive format. | |
| concept test | A qualitative or quantitative examination of consumer reactions to a proposed advertising idea. | |
| concept test-based forecasting models | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| concept testing and development | The process in which a concept statement is presented to potential buyers or users, for their reactions. These reactions permit the developer to estimate the sales value of the concept (whether product or advertising) and to make changes in it so as to enhance its sales value. | |
| conceptual definition | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| conditional sale contract | An agreement under which the title does not pass to the buyer until the buyer has fulfilled his/her contract obligations. The buyer assumes complete responsibility upon delivery, must maintain the article purchased, and must make regular payments. If the buyer defaults, the seller may repossess, use the proceeds of a sale of the item to satisfy the remaining obligation, and refund the excess, if any, above the cost of repossession and sale, to the buyer. If the proceeds of a sale are insufficient, the buyer is still technically liable to the seller for the remainder. | |
| confirmation | In consumer satisfaction theory, confirmation refers to a situation in which a product performs exactly as it was expected to, i.e., prepurchase expectations are confirmed. | |
| confirmation (of order) | From a retailer's standpoint, the official order of a store for goods made out on the retailer's order form and countersigned by the buyer and merchandise manager. It is distinguished from the memoranda that buyers often make out on vendors' order blanks that are not official orders and are not binding on the store. From the vendor's standpoint, it is the acknowledgment of a buyer's order by the vendor. It is the buyer's legal acceptance of the offer made by the buyer generally in writing. | |
| conflicting incoming stimuli | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| conglomerate | A firm with large diversified holdings acquired through acquisitions and mergers. It is also known as a multimarket firm. | |
| conglomerate diversification | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| conglomerate merger | The merger of companies in unrelated businesses, such as the merger of automobile manufacturers with electronics products manufacturers, or of airlines with hotels and car rental companies. | |
| Congruity Theory | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| conjoint analysis | A statistical technique in which respondents' utilities or valuations of attributes are inferred from the preferences they express for various combinations of these attributes. | |
| conjoint analysis-based simulation models | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| conjunctive rule | A decision-making rule of thumb or heuristic in which the consumer is assumed to set up minimum cutoffs for each of several attributes or dimensions of a product or thing. If the brand or item does not meet all of the minimum criteria, it is rejected. The evaluation rule leads to an acceptable or nonacceptable decision. For example. a conjunctive rule may be that a slice of bread must have at least 3 grams of protein, minimum percentages of specific vitamins, less than 100 mg sodium, and less than 75 calories per slice to be acceptable. A brand must meet all of these minimum attributes or it is unacceptable. A shortfall in one attribute is not offset by excessive endowment in another attribute. | |
| conscience | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| conscious parallelism | 1. (legislation definition) Evidence of concert of action implied from business behavior, such as setting parallel prices, without proof of an express agreement. 2. (strategic marketing definition) The pattern within an industry in which firms prefer to "follow" other firms (typically the market leader) rather than pursue a different course. The reason for behaving in this manner is that there is little opportunity and/or little gain to be made by adopting a different strategy from the others in the industry. It is most often observed as similarity in pricing actions. | |
| consent order | An order issued after a defendant agrees to discontinue a complained-of practice without admitting any violation of the law. | |
| consideration | 1. (sales definition) A sales manager leadership style wherein sales managers are supportive, friendly, and considerate of their sales personnel; they consult with them and represent their interests; and they recognize their contributions. In essence, a sales manager using this kind of leadership style exhibits relationship-oriented behavior. 2. (retailing definition) Something of value received or given at the request of the promiser in reliance on and in return for the promiser's promise. It may be a payment of money, or merely an exchange of promises, as when a buyer orders goods and the vendor confirms the order. The buyer promises to buy and take the goods, and the vendor promises to sell and ship them. | |
| consideration set | The group of alternatives that a consumer evaluates in making a decision. | |
| consignee | A person or firm to whom shipments are made. | |
| consignment | 1. (channels of distribution definition) A method of selling whereby a manufacturer provides an intermediary with the merchandise while retaining title to the goods. The intermediary is free to sell the product and to pay only for goods actually sold. 2. (retailing definition) The products shipped for future sale or other purpose, title remaining with the shipper (consignor), for which the receiver (consignee), upon acceptance, is accountable. The consignee may be the eventual purchaser, may act as the agent through whom the sale is effected, or may otherwise dispose of the products in accordance with an agreement with the consignor. | |
| consignment sale | In this sale, title remains with the vendor until the goods are resold by the retailer; however, any unsold portion of the goods may be returned to the vendor without payment. | |
| consistency theory | A theory that purports that attitudes, values, and behavior tend to be consistent in the cognitive structures of the individual. | |
| consistent stimuli | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| consolidated buying | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| consolidated delivery service | A private business organized to deliver products for retailers. A fee is charged for every package delivered. | |
| consolidated metropolitan statistical area (CMSA) | An area that contains two or more overlapping and/or interlocking primary metropolitan statistical areas. | |
| consolidation | 1. (physical distribution definition) The small shipments combined or consolidated into larger shipments to reduce transportation expenditures. Larger volume shipments typically qualify for quantity discounts. Generally the larger the shipment the lower the freight rate per hundred weight. 2. (environments definition) The joining of two or more independent business firms into a new firm. Unlike a merger, the acquired company does not maintain its identity. | |
| consolidator | A person or firm providing the service of combining small shipments into larger shipments to reduce transportation expenditures. | |
| conspicuous consumption | A term believed to have been coined by Veblen implying consumption for the sake of displaying to others wealth, power, or prestige. Usually it is applied to expensive or luxury goods rather than everyday items. | |
| conspiracy | An agreement between competitors, made prior to contacting customers, concerning their relationships with the customers. | |
| constant dollar value | The adjustment of dollar values by purchasing power to eliminate or allow for the effects of price changes on data in dollars reported over time. This is sometimes referred to as real dollars. | |
| constant dollars | Dollars that have been adjusted statistically to a base period in an attempt to remove the effects of inflation and deflation. | |
| constant sum method | A type of comparative rating scale in which an individual is instructed to divide some given sum among two or more attributes on the basis of some criterion (e.g., their importance to him or her). | |
| constitutive definition | A definition in which a given construct is defined in terms of other constructs in the set, sometimes in the form of an equation that expresses the relationship among them. | |
| construct validation | An approach to validating a measure by determining what construct, concept, or trait the instrument is in fact measuring. | |
| consultative selling | A customized sales presentation approach in which the salesperson is viewed as an expert and serves as a consultant to the customer. The salesperson identifies the prospects' needs and recommends the best solution even if the best solution does not require the salesperson's products or services. | |
| consumable supplies | The products that are used up or consumed in the operation of a business. Examples are cleaning compounds, business forms, soaps, and small tools. | |
| consumer | Traditionally, the ultimate user or consumer of goods, ideas, and services. However, the term also is used to imply the buyer or decision maker as well as the ultimate consumer. A mother buying cereal for consumption by a small child is often called the consumer although she may not be the ultimate user. | |
| consumer "bill of rights" | President John F. Kennedy's directive to the Consumer Advisory Council in 1962 setting forth the federal government's role in consumerism in aiding consumers to exercise their rights to safety, to be informed, to choose, and to be heard. | |
| consumer awareness | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| consumer behavior | 1. (consumer behavior definition) The dynamic interaction of affect and cognition, behavior, and the environment by which human beings conduct the exchange aspects of their lives. 2. The overt actions of consumers. 3. (consumer behavior definition) The behavior of the consumer or decision maker in the market place of products and services. It often is used to describe the interdisciplinary field of scientific study that attempts to understand and describe such behavior. | |
| Consumer Behavior Odyssey | A team of researchers that traveled across the country in the summer of 1986 interviewing, filming, and recording the behavior of consumers engaging in various consumption activities. | |
| consumer buying behavior | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| consumer choice model | A model attempting to represent how consumers use and combine information about alternatives in order to make a choice among them. | |
| consumer cooperative | A marketing organization owned and operated for the mutual benefit of consumer-owners who have voluntarily associated themselves for the purpose. | |
| consumer credit | Credit used by individuals or families for the satisfaction of their own wants. Also, it is the granting of credit by retailers, banks, and finance companies for this purpose. | |
| Consumer Credit Protection Act (1968) | This act, also known as the Truth-in-Lending Act, requires full disclosure of terms and conditions of finance charges, and restricts the garnishment of wages. | |
| consumer decision making | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| consumer decision making unit | The decision maker in the family, organization, or group. The decision making unit need not necessarily be a single individual, but may be a committee or informal set of individuals that makes the final choices. Often the decision reflects not only the attributes of the products being considered, but also the influence patterns found in formal groups and informal groups. | |
| consumer demand | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| consumer education | The formalized teaching efforts to provide consumers with skills and knowledge to allocate their resources wisely in the marketplace. | |
| consumer expenditure survey | A survey of a representative sample of the U.S. population conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics to provide a continuous flow of data on the buying habits of American consumers. The survey consists of two components: an interview panel survey of five interviews every three months, and a diary or record keeping survey of households for two consecutive one-week periods. | |
| consumer finance company | A lending agency licensed under state laws to engage in the business of lending money to consumers. It is also referred to as a personal finance company. | |
| Consumer Generated Media (CGM) | Refers to posts made by consumers to support or oppose products, web sties, or companies, which are very powerful when it comes to company image. It can reach a large audience and, therefore, may change your business overnight.
Source: SEMPO | |
| Consumer Goods Pricing Act (1975) | This act repealed the Miller-Tydings Resale Price Maintenance Act and the McGuire-Keogh Fair Trade Enabling Act, thereby removing federal antitrust exemption for resale price maintenance agreements. | |
| consumer group interaction | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| consumer information | The policies aimed at providing consumers with marketplace information and fostering effective utilization leading to improved consumer choice. | |
| consumer information processing (CIP) | The mental processes by which consumers interpret information from the environment to make it meaningful and integrate that information to make decisions. | |
| Consumer Market Insight | An in-depth understanding of customer behavior that is more qualitative than quantitative. Specifically, it describes the role played by the product/brand in question in the life of its consumers -- and their general stance towards it including the way they acquire information about the category or brand, the importance attached to generic and specific values, attitudes, expectations, as well as the choice-making process. It refers to a holistic appreciation, which used to be traditionally split by market researchers and brand managers as qualitative and quantitative research. | |
| consumer motivation | The needs, wants, drives, and desires of an individual that lead him or her toward the purchase of products or ideas. The motivations may be physiologically, psychologically, or environmentally driven. | |
| consumer movement | A mix of people, ideas, and organizations representing previously unrepresented groups or concerns and having change or reform as common ends. | |
| consumer price index (CPI) | A statistical measure maintained by the U.S. government that shows the trend of prices of goods and services (a market basket) purchased by consumers. | |
| consumer product | A product produced for, and purchased by, households for their use. | |
| Consumer Product Safety Act (1972) | This act established the Consumer Product Safety Commission and transferred a number of product safety functions previously assigned to other agencies to this commission. | |
| Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) | A federal regulatory agency that conducts investigations on consumer product safety, tests consumer products, provides training in product safety, promulgates product safety standards, and collects data relating to causes and prevention of injury associated with consumer products. | |
| consumer protection | The body of federal, state, and local government legislation designed to assure safety, purity, quality, and efficacy of many products and services and the reliability of statements in advertising about them. | |
| consumer protection legislation | The basic consumer protection legislation enacted by the federal government is the Federal Trade Commission Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices. Others include the Consumer Credit Protection Act, the Consumer Product Safety Act, environmental protection acts, the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Federal Trade Commission Improvement Act, the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, the Pure Food and Drug Act, the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act, the Telephone Disclosure and Dispute Resolution Act, and the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act. | |
| consumer relations | The communications efforts used to support the sale of a product or service. This generally includes product publicity, company image advertising, interaction with consumer groups, and customer inquiry response systems. | |
| consumer sales promotion | Externally directed incentives offered to the ultimate consumer. These usually consist of offers such as coupons, premiums, rebates, etc., designed to gain one or more of the following: product trial; repeat usage of product; more frequent or multiple product purchases; introduce a new/improved product; introduce new packaging or different size packages; neutralize competitive advertising or sales promotions; capitalize on seasonal, geographic, or special events; encourage consumers to trade up to a larger size, more profitable line, or another product in the line. | |
| consumer satisfaction | 1. (consumer behavior definition) The degree to which a consumer's expectations are fulfilled or surpassed by a product. 2. (consumer behavior definition) The post-purchase evaluation of a consumer action by the ultimate consumer or the decision maker. The beliefs, attitudes, and future purchase patterns; word-of-mouth communication; and legal and informal complaints have been related to the post-purchase satisfaction/dissatisfaction process. | |
| Consumer Sentiment Index | The Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS) was developed at the University of Michigan Survey Research Center to measure the confidence or optimism (pessimism) of consumers in their future well-being and coming economic conditions. The index measures short- and long-term expectations of business conditions and the individual's perceived economic well-being. Evidence indicates that the ICS is a leading indicator of economic activity as consumer confidence seems to precede major spending decisions. | |
| consumer sovereignty | The dominant role of the consumer in dictating the type and quality of goods and services produced in an economic system. | |
| consumer/product relationship | The relationship between consumers and a product or brand. It is how consumers perceive the product as relating to their goals and values. The consumer/product relationship is important to consider in developing marketing strategies. | |
| consumerism | The widening range of activities of government, business, and independent organizations that are designed to protect individuals from practices that infringe upon their rights as consumers. Or, the organized efforts of consumers seeking redress, restitution, and remedy for dissatisfaction they have accumulated in the acquisition of their standard of living. | |
| consumers' goods | Goods that directly satisfy human wants in consumption and that assist in further production only indirectly or incidentally, if at all. | |
| consumer's surplus | The gap between total utility a given consumer gets and total market value. Consumer's surplus is created by the fact that the last consumer buys at a price where the amount of utility of the good and market price are equal; consumers who would have paid more for earlier units have to pay only the market price and receive a surplus. | |
| consumers' surplus | The difference between the maximum price that consumers are willing to pay and the lower amount they actually pay. | |
| consumption | The direct and final use of goods or services in satisfying the wants of free human beings. | |
| consumption function | A schedule of the amounts of their disposable income that individuals tend to devote to consumption at various levels of income. | |
| containerization | The physical grouping of master cartons into one unit load for materials handling or transport. The basic objective is to increase materials handling efficiency. | |
| containerizing | The practice in transportation of consolidating a number of packages into one container that is sealed at the point of origin and remains sealed until it reaches the point of destination. | |
| container-on-flatcar (COFC) | A shipment of goods in a container on a rail flatcar. Shipments moving as COFC receive special rates. | |
| content analysis | The analysis of articles and news stories in various media used as a method of identifying positive and negative mentions about an organization, product, service, or issue. It is a method used to measure impact of publicity and other promotional and public relations efforts. | |
| Content Management Systems (CMS) | In computing, a content management system (CMS) is a document centric collaborative application for managing documents and other content. A CMS is often a web application and often it is used as a method of managing web sites and web content. The market for content management systems remains fragmented, with many open source and proprietary solutions available. Source: Wikipedia
Source: SEMPO | |
| Content Network | Also called Contextual Networks, content networks include Google and Yahoo! Contextual Search networks that serve paid search ads triggered by keywords related to the page content a user is viewing.
Source: SEMPO | |
| Content Targeting | An ad serving process in Google and Yahoo! that displays keyword triggered ads related to the content or subject (context) of the web site a user is viewing. Contrast to search network serves, in which an ad is displayed when a user types a keyword into the search box of a search engine or one of its partner sties.
Source: SEMPO | |
| content validity | An approach to validating a measure by determining the adequacy with which the domain of the characteristic is captured by the measure; it is sometimes called face validity. | |
| contest | A consumer sales promotion technique requiring the participant to use specific skills or ability to solve or complete a specified problem to qualify for a prize or award. | |
| contest, sales | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| Contextual Advertising | Advertising that is automatically served or placed on a web page based on the page's content, keywords and phrases. Contrast to a SERP (search engine result page) ad display. For example, contextual ads for digital cameras would be shown on a page with an article about photography, not because the user entered "digital cameras" in a search box.
Source: SEMPO | |
| Contextual Distribution | the marketing decision to display search ads on certain publisher sites across the web instead of, or in addition to, placing PPC ads on search networks.
Source: SEMPO | |
| Contextual Network | Also called Content Ads and content Network, contextual network ads are served on web site pages adjacent to content that contains the keywords being bid upon. Contextual ads are somewhat like traditional display ads placed in print media and, like traditional ad buys, are often purchased on the same CPM (cost per thousand impressions) model for purchased keywords, rather than a CPC basis.
Source: SEMPO | |
| Contextual Search | A search that analyzes the page being viewed by a user and gives a list of related search results. Offered by Yahoo! and Google.
Source: SEMPO | |
| Contextual Search Campaigns | A paid placement search campaign that takes a search ad listing beyond search engine results pages and onto the sites of matched content web partners.
Source: SEMPO | |
| contingency contract | An agreement to deliver goods or services at a price to be determined either by the actual costs incurred while performing the service or producing the product or by the measured value realized after the service has been performed or the product has been used. | |
| contingency planning | Development of plans to provide an alternative to the main plan in the event of threats or opportunities that were thought to have a low probability of occurring at the time of the preparation of the main plan. The contingency plan deals not with unforeseen events, but with events that were foreseen but considered unlikely to occur. | |
| contingency pricing | The setting of a price based either on actual costs incurred after the service has been performed or the product produced or on the measured value the buyer realizes because of the service or product. | |
| contingent reward leadership | A leadership style wherein sales managers maintain close supervision with their salespeople. In essence, using this leadership style entails identifying and clarifying job tasks for the salespeople, defining the objectives, recommending how to execute job assignments, and indicating how successful performance will lead to attainment of desired job rewards. | |
| continuity | 1. (advertising definition) A script for a television commercial. 2. The timing pattern used in a media plan to schedule the exposure of the advertising messages during the time period covered by the media plan. 3. (channels of distribution definition) The degree to which a channel relationship is expected to last into the future. | |
| continuity plan | Any type of consumer sales promotion technique that encourages customers to purchase products on a continuing basis or over time. The plan often is based on some sort of saving or accumulation scheme such as trading stamps, points, coupons, or the like. | |
| continuous demand | The demand for products that have a long, relatively stable history of sales. | |
| continuous innovation | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| continuous media pattern | A timing pattern used in a media plan whereby the advertising messages are scheduled continuously throughout the time period covered by the media plan. | |
| continuous replenishment (CR) | A finished product inventory management system where high volume items are shipped in addition to requested replenishment products in anticipation of actual demand. High volume items are utilized to provide the benefits of full truckload deliveries. | |
| contraceptive social marketing (CSM) | The application of commercial marketing technology to the promotion of contraceptive products (condoms, birth control pills, etc.) as part of public or private nonprofit family planning programs. | |
| contract | The agreement between two or more persons that creates an obligation to do or not to do a particular thing. Its essentials are competent parties, subject matter, legal consideration, mutuality of agreement, and mutuality of obligation. | |
| contract carrier | 1. (physical distribution definition) A contract carrier performs transportation services on a selected basis after receiving authorization in the form of a permit. The contract refers to the agreement between the shipper and a contract carrier. 2. (retailing definition) A transportation company that provides shipping service to one or various shippers on a contract basis. It does not maintain regularly scheduled service and its rates are more easily adapted to specific situations than are those of the common carrier. | |
| contract department | A unit in a department store set up to sell in quantity to institutions such supplies as food, bedding, floor coverings; a department that arranges for the sale of goods in quantity to large buyers at special prices. | |
| contract manufacturing | A joint venture method by which work is contracted to a qualified manufacturer to produce the product(s) that the firm wishes to market. Contract manufacturing offers a chance to enter a market faster with less risk, but has the drawback of less control over the manufacturing process. | |
| contract, tying | This exists when a person agrees to sell one product, the "tying product," only on the condition that the vendee also purchase another product, the "tied product." It is also called a tie-in arrangement and is generally illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act or Clayton Act. | |
| contractual vertical marketing system | 1. (retailing definition) A form of vertical marketing system in which independent firms at different levels in the channel operate contractually to obtain the economies and market impacts that could not be obtained by unilateral action. Under this system, the identity of the individual firm and its autonomy of operation remain intact. 2. (channels of distribution definition) A marketing channel that achieves vertical coordination between independent firms at different channel levels through the use of contractual agreements. The three principal types of contractual systems are franchise system, retailer sponsored cooperative, and wholesaler sponsored cooperative. | |
| contribution | The amount of revenue left over from the sale of a product after the direct costs and indirect costs related to the product have been subtracted out. | |
| contribution pricing | A method of determining the price of a product or service that uses the direct costs or indirect traceable costs related to the production and sale of the product or services as the relevant costs. | |
| control | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| control group | A group of subjects in an experiment who are not exposed to any of the experimental treatments or alternatives whose effects are to be measured; the control group is used to assess what part of the total observed effect was due to things other than the experimental variable(s). | |
| controllable cost | The cost that varies in volume, efficiency, choice of alternatives, and management determination. It is also any cost an organizational unit has authority to incur and/or ability to change. | |
| controlled circulation | The distribution of a newspaper or magazine, usually free, to selected individuals who are members of an audience of special interest to advertisers. | |
| controlled test market | A market in which an entire marketing test program is conducted by an outside service. | |
| convenience product | A consumer good and/or service (such as soap, candy bar, and shoe shine) that is bought frequently, often on impulse, with little time and effort spent on the buying process. A convenience product usually is low-priced and is widely available. | |
| convenience sample | A nonprobability sample that is sometimes called an accidental sample because those included in the sample enter by accident in that they just happen to be where the study is being conducted when it is being conducted. | |
| convenience store | A retail institution whose primary advantage to consumers is locational convenience. It is usually a high-margin, high inventory turnover retail institution. | |
| convergent validity | The confirmation of the existence of a construct determined by the correlations exhibited by independent measures of the construct. | |
| Conversion Action | The desired action you want a visitor to take on your site. Includes purchase, subscription to the company newsletter, request for follow-up or more information (lead generation), download of a company free offer (research results, a video or a tool), subscription to company updates and news.
Source: SEMPO | |
| conversion of non-users | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| Conversion Rate | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| converter | In the textile and paper trades, a wholesaling firm engaged in manufacturing activities to a significant degree. Also, a firm or merchant who purchases grey cotton cloth (woven but not finished) and has it bleached, dyed, printed, or mercerized before sale. | |
| conveyor | A materials handling device widely used in shipping and receiving operations. Conveyors are classified as power or gravity, with roller or belt movement. | |
| conviction | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| cookie | An information file stored on a user's computer by a Web site as an identifier. Cookies are often used to manage user preferences and personalization on Web sites. | |
| co-op | The sharing of advertising costs between a manufacturer and distributor or dealer.
Source: IEG | |
| co-op | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| co-op coupons | Offers from a group of noncompetitive or mutually enhancing group of sellers who have either joined or been gathered together to offer a greater value than any could alone. | |
| co-op mailing | The distribution of coupons or other sales promotion offers for a variety of products through a single mailing piece. | |
| cooperative | An establishment owned by an association of customers of the establishment whether or not they are incorporated. In general, the distinguishing features of a cooperative are patronage dividends based on the volume of expenditures by the members and a limitation of one vote per member regardless of the amount of stock owned. | |
| cooperative advertising | An approach to paying for local advertising or retail advertising whereby the advertising space or time is placed by a local retail store but is partly or fully paid for by a national manufacturer whose product is featured in the advertising. | |
| cooperative buying | Any and all consolidations of orders by a number of stores or store buyers in separate stores. It is also called affiliated buying. | |
| cooperative chain | A group of retailers who on their own initiative have banded together for the purpose of buying, merchandising, or promoting. It is also called a cooperative group. | |
| cooperative exporting | The cooperation of domestic firms for the purpose of international exports. Firms that compete domestically may collaborate internationally. | |
| cooperative game theory | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| cooperative group | A contractual marketing system in which retailers combine to form a wholesale warehouse operation. Its services to retailer members are primarily large-scale buying and warehousing operations. | |
| cooperative marketing | The process by which independent producers, wholesalers, retailers, consumers, or combinations of them act collectively in buying or selling or both. | |
| cooperative wholesaler | A wholesale business owned by retail merchants. Typically, the wholesale establishment buys in its own name. Examples exist in the food, drug, and hardware lines. | |
| copy platform | A statement prepared by the advertiser (often in association with an advertising agency) setting forth the advertising strategy, a summary of the rationale for the strategy, and related background information. | |
| copy research | The testing of audience reactions to advertising messages while the advertising is being developed (called pre-testing) or after the advertising has been produced in final form (called post-testing.) | |
| copy testing | Copy testing is a specialized field of marketing research that determines an ad’s effectiveness based on consumer responses, feedback, and behavior. Also known as pre-testing, it covers all media channels including television, print, radio, internet, and social media.
Source: The MASB Common Language Project.
http://www.themasb.org/common-language-project/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_testing | |
| copyfitting | The process of calculating how much space a given amount of text will require on a printed page and rewriting the copy, if necessary, to fit into the available space. | |
| copyright | 1. (legislation definition) A copyright offers the owner of original work that can be printed, recorded, or "fixed" in any manner the sole right to reproduce and distribute the work, to display or perform it, and to authorize others to do so, during the author's lifetime and for fifty years thereafter. 2. (product development definition) An exclusive right to the production or sale of literary, musical, or other artistic work, or to the use of a print or label. Occasionally, it is applied to a brand, but brands are usually protected by registration in the Patent and Copyright Office as a trademark. | |
| Copyright Amendments Act of 1992 | This act allows for automatic renewal of copyright works eligible for renewal between years 1995 and 2005. Any copyright secured between January 1, 1963 and December 31, 1977 has been extended automatically for 47 years. | |
| copywriter | A person with good verbal abilities who is talented in creating advertising ideas and skilled at writing advertising copy. | |
| core benefit | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| core product | The central benefit or purpose for which a consumer buys a product. The core product varies from purchaser to purchaser. The core product or core benefit may come either from the physical good or service performance, or from the augmented dimensions of the product. | |
| Core Sponsor | Concept developed by IEG to describe companies whose sponsorships are aligned with internal practices. Rather than using sponsorship as a marketing ploy, Core Sponsors gain loyal customers by living their values. What they sponsor reflects the DNA of their brand. Core Sponsors include Ben & Jerry’s, Harley-Davidson, Patagonia, Timberland, Vans, Virgin and Yoplait.
Source: IEG | |
| Core Sports | Term developed by Vans to refer to youth sports that feature individual, rather than team, competition, including: skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing, wakeboarding, BMX, supercross, and freestyle motocross.
Source: IEG | |
| corporate advertising | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| corporate buy agreement | A contractual buy-sell agreement in which the volume needs of multiple sites are aggregated. Usually, the buyer negotiates a favorable price and commits to a minimum annual purchase volume. | |
| corporate culture | The patterns and norms that govern the behavior of a corporation and its employees; particularly, the shared values, beliefs, and customs. | |
| corporate marketing system | A marketing channel that achieves vertical coordination through the joint ownership and operation of two or more channel members on different levels of distribution. | |
| corporate mission | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| corporate purpose | The raison d'etre of a firm that describes the scope of the firm and its dominant emphasis and values. The purpose (or mission) of an organization is a function of five elements: (1) the history of the organization; (2) the current preferences of the management and/or owners; (3) environmental considerations; (4) the resources of the organization; and (5) the distinctive competences of the organization. | |
| corporate relations | The use of communication and public relations techniques to build favorable attitudes toward a particular company with competitors, consumers, the financial community, stockholders, and other publics. | |
| corporate strategy | The overall plan that integrates the strategies of all the businesses within the corporation. It usually describes the overall mission, the financial and human resource strategies and policies that affect all businesses within the corporation, the organization structure, the management of the interdependencies among businesses, and major initiatives to change the scope of the firm such as acquisitions and divestments. | |
| corporate vertical marketing system | A form of vertical marketing system in which all or most of the functions from production to distribution are at least partially owned and controlled by a single enterprise. Corporate systems typically operate manufacturing plants, warehouse facilities, and retail outlets. | |
| corrective advertising | An advertising message placed by an advertiser in order to correct a deceptive or unfair advertising message previously disseminated by the advertiser. This type of advertising is used when the Federal Trade Commission finds that certain advertising messages used by an advertiser require correction. | |
| corrective steps | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| correlation analysis | A statistical technique used to measure the closeness of the linear relationship between two or more intervally scaled variables. | |
| Cosponsors | Sponsors of the same property.
Source: IEG | |
| cost | The money expended to produce and market a product or service. | |
| cost analysis | A sales management evaluation and control method for monitoring sales force performance. A cost analysis involves monitoring the costs of various selling functions across individual salespeople, districts, products, and customer types. When put together with the data from a sales analysis, this procedure allows a firm to judge the profitability of various products, customer types, and territories. | |
| cost and freight (C.F.R.) | The terminology is the same as cost insurance freight except the seller is not responsible for risk or loss at any point outside the factory. | |
| cost center | A division, department, or subdivision thereof; a group of machines, people, or both; a single machine, operator, or any other unit of activity into which a business is divided for cost assignment and allocation. | |
| cost code | The item cost information indicated on price tickets in code. A common method of coding is the use of letters from an easily remembered word or expression with nonrepeating letters corresponding to numerals. The following is illustrative: | |
| cost complement | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| cost department | A manufacturing or processing department within a retail store that is operated on the cost method of accounting. Also, one of the independent departments selling merchandise or service (principally service) but carrying no inventories at retail value?e.g., restaurant, barber shop, fur storage, and beauty parlor. | |
| cost insurance freight (C.I.F.) | Under this contract the risk of loss or damage to goods is transferred to the buyer once the goods have passed the ship's rail. But the seller has to pay the expense of transportation for the goods up to the port of destination, including the expense of insurance. | |
| cost inventory | The actual cost or market value, whichever is lower, of the inventory on hand at any time. The term seldom refers to the original price paid for the merchandise, but rather the present depreciated worth. If the original price is to be designated, the term generally used is billed cost of inventory. | |
| cost method of inventory | Determination of the cost of inventory on hand by marking the actual cost on each price ticket in code and computing inventory value using these unit cost prices. | |
| cost multiplier | The complement of the markup percent. This figure indicates the average relationship of cost to retail value of goods handled in the accounting period. It is also referred to as the cost complement or cost percent. | |
| cost of industrial sales call | The cost includes the salaries, commissions, bonuses, travel expenses, and entertainment expenses that a company encounters each time a salesperson makes a face-to-face presentation to one or more persons. | |
| cost of information search | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| cost of living | The money required to maintain a particular standard of living expressed in terms of the purchase of specified goods and services. | |
| cost oriented strategy | An approach to improving performance by reducing the costs per unit. The cost advantage can be used to improve profit margins or increase market share by cutting prices. | |
| cost per click (CPC) | A specific type of cost-per-action program where advertisers pay for each time a user clicks on an ad or link. | |
| cost percent | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| Cost/Benefit Ratio | This is the ratio that IEG has developed based on market pricing to determine the amount of value a sponsor expects for each dollar invested in rights fees.
Source: IEG | |
| cost-of-living allowance (COLA) | An adjustment to wages and earnings, particularly during periods of rapid increases in prices, to keep them in line with the cost of living. | |
| cost-per-action (CPA) | An online advertising payment model where payment is based solely on qualifying actions such as sales or registrations. | |
| cost-per-rating point (CPR or CPRP) | A method of comparing the cost effectiveness of two or more alternative media vehicles in radio or television. CPRP is computed by dividing the cost of the time unit or commercial by the rating of the media vehicle during that time period. | |
| cost-per-thousand (CPM) | A simple and widely used method of comparing the cost effectiveness of two or more alternative media vehicles. It is the cost of using the media vehicle to reach 1,000 people or households. The CPM of any vehicle is computed by dividing the cost of placing a specific ad or commercial in the media vehicle by the vehicle's audience size and multiplying the result by 1,000. | |
| cost-plus | A method of determining the selling price of goods or services whereby cost is increased by an agreed upon increment. | |
| cost-plus pricing | A method of determining the price of a product or service that uses direct costs, indirect costs, and fixed costs whether related to the production and sale of the product or service or not. These costs are converted to per unit costs for the product and then a predetermined percentage of these costs is added to provide a profit margin. The resulting price is cost per unit plus the percentage markup. | |
| count and recount promotion | A trade sales promotion technique in which inventory is counted at the beginning of the promotion and recounted at the end of the promotion period. Discounts are then allowed based on the total quantity of product moved during the promotion period. | |
| counter purchase | A form of countertrade in which the selling firm agrees to purchase, at a later time, goods from the buyer equal to the amount of the original sale. | |
| counterargument | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| counterpurchase | A transaction in which each delivery is paid for in cash. In most counterpurchase transactions, two separate contracts are signed, one in which the supplier sells products for a cash settlement (the original sales contract), the other in which the supplier agrees to purchase and market unrelated products from the buyer (a separate, parallel contract). This is also termed parallel barter or parallel trading. | |
| countertrade | This is a broad term incorporating a real distinction from barter, because money or credit is involved in the transaction. Countertrade broadly defines an arrangement in which firms both sell to and buy from their overseas customers. It is a sale of goods and services tied to an offsetting transaction, spelled out in a countertrade agreement. For example, a company sells jet engines to a foreign country and agrees as a condition of the sale to purchase goods or services of a designated value or quantity as a full or partial offset. | |
| countervailing duties | The duties levied to offset subsidies granted in the exporting country. | |
| countervailing power | 1. (economic definition) The power exercised by large organizations with diverse and conflicting interests in the marketplace. 2. (environments definition) The ability of individuals, companies, or groups to offset the power of large enterprises or large purchasers. | |
| country of origin effect | The effect that the country of origin of the product has on the buyer's quality perceptions of the product. | |
| coupon | A printed certificate entitling the bearer to a stated price reduction or special value on a specific product, generally for a specified period of time. The value of the coupon is set and redeemed by the seller. | |
| coupon fraud | A planned misredemption of coupon offers designed to illegally obtain the value of a coupon without adhering to the published rules for redemption. | |
| coupon payment | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| coupon redemption | The use of a seller's value certificate at the time of purchase to obtain either a lower price or greater value than normal. Also, this term is used to describe the act of accepting a seller's certificate by a retailer or other intermediary. | |
| courtesy days | The days on which stores extend to credit customers the privilege of making purchases at sale prices in advance of public advertising of the sale. | |
| coverage | The degree to which a particular advertising medium delivers an audience within a particular geographic area or within a specific target market. | |
| CPI | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| CPM | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| CPO | Acronym for Cost Per Order. The dollar amount of advertising or marketing necessary to acquire an order. Calculated by dividing marketing expenses by the number of orders. Also referred to as CPA.
Source: SEMPO | |
| CPR | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| CPRP | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| CPS | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| CPSC | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| CR | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| Crawler | Automated programs in search engines that gather web site listings by automatically crawling the web. A search engine's crawler (also called a spider or robot) "reads" page text contents and web page coding, and also follows links to other hyperlinked pages on the web pages it crawls. A crawler makes copies of the web pages found and stores these in the search engine's index, or database.
Source: SEMPO | |
| creative boutique | A limited-service advertising agency that focuses its work on the development of highly effective (creative) advertising messages for its clients. | |
| Creatives | Unique words, design and display of a paid-space advertisement. In paid search advertising, creative refers to the ad's title (headline), description (text offer) and display URL (clickable link to advertiser's web site landing page). Unique creative display includes word emphasis (boldfaced, italicized, in quotes), typeface style, and on some site, added graphic images, logos, animation or video clips.
Source: SEMPO | |
| credit | A method of purchasing wherein the product or service is acquired for the promise of paying money for the acquisition at a later time. | |
| credit bureau | An organization that collects, maintains, and provides credit information to members or subscribers; sometimes cooperatively owned by users of the service. It maintains an up-to-date file containing a so-called master card (of credit information) for each consumer who has asked for credit from local merchants who use the service of the bureau. | |
| credit limit | The maximum quantity of credit that may be allowed to be outstanding on an individual customer account. | |
| credit union | A cooperative savings and loan organization formed for the purpose of encouraging thrift among members and making loans to them at relatively low rates of interest. | |
| crisis management | An attempt by an organization to reduce, minimize, or control the impact of a calamitous event through various communication techniques. | |
| criterion related validity | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| critical success factors | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| CRM | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| cross impact analysis | A forecasting technique often used in futures research that logically studies the effects of the interaction of specified events with each other. The wide variety of impacts that can occur are analyzed and assessed to determine the overall effect. It has been used to assess market and product opportunities. | |
| cross ruff | A consumer sales promotion technique in which a noncompetitive product is used as the vehicle to distribute a coupon, sample, or other sales promotion offer for another product. | |
| cross selling | 1. (retailing definition) The process of selling between and among departments to facilitate larger transactions and to make it more convenient for the customer to do related item shopping. 2. (sales promotion definition) A consumer sales promotion technique in which the manufacturer attempts to sell the consumer products related to a product the consumer already uses or which the marketer has available. | |
| cross tabulation | A count of the number of cases that fall into each of several categories when the categories are based on two or more variables considered simultaneously. | |
| cross-elasticity of demand | A measure of the extent to which a change in the price of one product affects the sale of another--e.g., a small percentage change in the price of Product A may result in a large change in the sales of Product B. | |
| cross-functional integration | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| cross-price elasticity | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| Cross-Promotions | A joint marketing effort conducted by two or more cosponsors using the sponsored property as the central theme.
Source: IEG | |
| cross-sectional study | An investigation involving a sample of elements selected from the population of interest that are measured at a single point in time. | |
| Crowdsourcing | Crowdsourcing is the process of posing a question or problem to a large group of people to try to get to the best answer quickly.
| |
| CRP | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| crude birth rate | The number of live births per year per thousand population. | |
| CSM | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| CSS | Cascading Style Sheet (file.css)
Source: Lazworld | |
| cue | A technical term from psychological learning theory for the stimulus that impels some sort of action. An advertisement may be the cue leading to desire for or purchase of a product. | |
| cultural ecology | The study of the process by which a society adapts to its environment by social transformations and evolutionary changes. | |
| cultural environment | The aggregate of patterns and norms that regulate a society's behavior including the values, beliefs, and customs that are shared and transmitted by the society. | |
| cultural lag | The differences in the rates of change in various parts of the same culture, such as the relatively slow rate of acceptance of products or ideas by some market segments compared to others. It is also used to indicate the failure of a society to keep up with technological and environmental changes in its economic, social, legal, and political policies. | |
| culture | 1. (consumer behavior definition) The set of learned values, norms, and behaviors that are shared by a society and are designed to increase the probability of the society's survival. 2. (consumer behavior definition) The institutionalized ways or modes of appropriate behavior. It is the modal or distinctive patterns of behavior of a people including implicit cultural beliefs, norms, values, and premises that govern conduct. It includes the shared superstitions, myths, folkways, mores, and behavior patterns that are rewarded or punished. | |
| cumulative audience | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| cumulative markon | The total of markon on the beginning inventory in any accounting period plus the aggregate purchase markon during the period, including additional markups, before any markdowns. It is the difference between the total cost and the total original retail value of all goods handled to date, commonly expressed as a percentage of cumulative original retail. | |
| cumulative markup | The average percentage markup for the period. It is the total retail price minus cost divided by retail price. | |
| cumulative quantity discount | A reduction in the price to be paid for purchases that exceed a given level of volume over a specified period of time. This form of discount is also referred to as a deferred discount or a patronage discount. | |
| cumulative reach | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| curiosity approach | A method for approaching a prospect in which the salesperson arouses the prospect's interest by making a statement that piques the prospect's curiosity. | |
| currency devaluation | A reduction in the value of one currency vis-a-vis other currencies. Devaluation takes place when currency values adjust in foreign exchange markets in response to supply and demand pressure, or in the case of regulated currency rates, when the government decides to change the rate. | |
| currency revaluation | An increase in the value of one currency vis-a-vis other currencies. Revaluation takes place when currency values adjust in the foreign exchange markets in response to supply and demand pressures. | |
| current account | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| Current Population Reports | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| current population survey (CPS) | A monthly nationwide survey of a scientifically selected sample of about 71,000 housing units in 729 areas, covering about 1,200 counties and cities in every state and the District of Columbia. The U.S. Bureau of the Census issues a series of publications on the results under the title Current Population Reports. | |
| Custom Feed | Create custom feeds for each of the shopping engines that allow you to submit XML feeds. Each of the engines has different product categories and feed requirements.
Source: SEMPO | |
| custom union | A market that is created when countries agree to eliminate trade and tariff barriers among the participating countries and impose uniform tariffs on nonmember countries. The custom union is an important element in a broader framework of economic integration. | |
| customary pricing | The practice of establishing a price for a product or service and not changing it over a relatively long time. Prices are changed by varying the quantity or quality of the product rather than the monetary value. | |
| customer | The actual or prospective purchaser of products or services. | |
| customer defection | A consideration in calculating customer lifetime value. Specifically, it measures how long a certain customer is expected to remain within a portfolio and in what time horizon that customer is expected to generate value. | |
| customer functions | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| customer inquiry response systems | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| customer lifetime value | The combination of actual value and potential value. | |
| Customer Loyalty | The new imperative of marketing. As the marketplace approaches a super-saturation of products–as the power in the marketing equation shifts from product to consumer–brand loyalty disappears. To survive, companies will have to create loyalty relationships with their customers, one customer at a time, according to IEG.
Source: IEG | |
| customer loyalty | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| customer orientation | A sales approach in which the customer's needs and interest are paramount. | |
| customer portfolio asset management | Putting customers into groups or "portfolios" based on their needs and their value, you can track their growth in a direction that improves their loyalty, value and profitability. This tool gives marketers to ability to manage customers as a financial asset. | |
| customer relationship management | A discipline in marketing combining database and computer technology with customer service and marketing communications. Customer relationship management (or CRM) seeks to create more meaningful one-on-one communications with the customer by applying customer data (demographic, industry, buying history, etc.) to every communications vehicle. At the simplest level, this would include personalizing e-mail or other communications with customer names. At a more complex level, CRM enables a company to produce a consistent, personalized marketing communication whether the customer sees an ad, visits a Web site, or calls customer service. | |
| customer satisfaction | Customer satisfaction is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Also the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a firm, its products, or its services exceeds specified satisfaction goals.
Source: The MASB Common Language Project.
http://www.themasb.org/common-language-project/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_satisfaction
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| customer segments | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| customer service (physical distribution definition | A customer-oriented corporate philosophy that integrates and manages all of the elements of the customer interface within a predetermined cost-service mix. | |
| customer service (product development definition) | The identifiable, but essentially intangible, activities that are offered by a seller in conjunction with a product, such as delivery and repair. These activities may be priced separately, but usually are not, and are provided only with a product that is being sold. These activities are not to be confused with intangible products (services), the types of products for which the activity is the primary purpose of a sale. The sale of service products may be accompanied by the provision of customer services, an example being the courteous treatment a bank client receives when entering the lobby for the purchase of any o? several service products such as check cashing or a loan. | |
| customer service (retailing definition) | The set of retail activities that increase the value customers receive when they shop and purchase merchandise. | |
| customer spotting | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| customer switching costs | The costs that tend to tie buyers to one supplier. These costs tend to be high when the product is durable or specialized, when the customer has invested a lot of time and energy in learning how to use the product, or when the customer has made special-purpose investments that are useless elsewhere. | |
| customer traffic | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| customer-driven innovation | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| customization | Tailoring the product to the special and unique needs of the customer. Each buyer is potentially a unique segment. | |
| customized portfolio models | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| customized sales presentation | A sales presentation developed from a detailed analysis or survey of the specific prospect's needs. | |
| Customs Cooperation Council | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| cutthroat competition | The temporary reduction of prices, often to unreasonable levels, such as below costs, for the purpose of eliminating competitors so as to be able to control a product's or service's price. | |
| CWO | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| Cyberspace | Coined by author William Gibson in his 1984 novel "Neuromancer," cyberspace is now used to describe all of the information available through computer networks.
Source: Lazworld | |
| cycles, business | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| cycles, economic | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| cyclical business | A business in which sales and profits are determined largely by the fluctuations of business conditions or the business cycle. | |