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 |
|---|
| damaged goods | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| damaged merchandise | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| DAR | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| dashboard | A monitoring tool that sits on top of a desktop that displays the status of varying metrics, allowing for benchmarking. | |
| data cleansing | The process of improving the quality of data by modifying its form or content, for example, by removing or correcting data values that are incorrect. | |
| data mining | The analytical process of finding new and potentially useful knowledge from data. The process includes the use of mathematical tools to find difficult patterns of intelligence. | |
| data system | The part of a decision support system that includes the processes used to capture and the methods used to store data coming from a number of external and internal sources. | |
| database | A compendium of information on current and prospective customers that generally includes demographic and psychographic data as well as purchase history and a record of brand contacts. | |
| database marketing | An approach by which computer database technologies are harnessed to design, create, and manage customer data lists containing information about each customer's characteristics and history of interactions with the company. The lists are used as needed for locating, selecting, targeting, servicing, and establishing relationships with customers in order to enhance the long-term value of these customers to the company. The techniques used for managing lists include: 1. database manipulation methods such as select and join, 2. statistical methods for predicting each customer's likelihood of future purchases of specific items based on his/her history of past purchases, and 3. measures for computing the life-time value of a customer on an ongoing basis. | |
| dating | 1. (sales promotion definition) A type of trade sales promotion in which the retailer is allowed to buy a certain amount of product from the manufacturer and then pay for that product over a prolonged period of time. 2. (retailing definition) The dates in which discounts can be taken or the full invoice amount is due. | |
| day-after-recall (DAR) | A method of testing the performance of an ad or a commercial whereby members of the audience are surveyed one day after their exposure to an ad or commercial in an advertising vehicle to discover how many of the audience members remember encountering that specific ad or commercial in the advertising vehicle. | |
| Dayparting | The ability to specify different times of day-or day of week-for ad displays, as a way to target searchers more specifically. An option that limits serves of specified ads based on day and time factors.
Source: SEMPO | |
| deal | An inducement such as a price reduction, free goods offer, or other special offering made by a seller to a channel member or the ultimate consumer, generally for a limited period of time. | |
| deal merchandise | A product that a seller may offer at a reduced price or that may have been specially bundled, processed, or manufactured for a limited period of time. | |
| deal prone | A description of the behavior of that group of consumers who make product purchase decisions on the basis of whether or not a particular product is being sold under some sort of deal condition. | |
| deal proneness | A consumer's general inclination to use promotional deals such as buying on sale or using coupons. | |
| dealer loader | A premium or other reward that is used to encourage a retailer to develop a special display or product offering. Commonly, the item is a reusable product that forms the basis for the display. When the event is over, the retailer is allowed to keep the premium. | |
| dealer tie-in (1) | The local support by a retailer for an advertiser's promotional program through use of in-store display materials, cooperative advertising, local contests, identification in media advertisements, and so on. | |
| dealer tie-in (2) | A manufacturer’s announcement that lists local dealers; not the same as “co-op.”
Source: IEG | |
| decay of a learned response | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| decay of advertising effects | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| deceitful diversion of patronage | A practice in which a retailer publishes or verbalizes falsehoods about a competitor in an attempt to divert patrons from that competitor. | |
| decennial census | The complete count of the population every ten years by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, as is provided by the U.S. Constitution. This enumeration and compilation of information about the characteristics of the U.S. population is a rich source of information for marketing. | |
| decentralized adjustment system | A system in which customers take their complaints directly to the selling department involved. Salespeople may make most of the adjustments, although the final approval of the department head or selling supervisor is often a requirement. | |
| decentralized management | The practice of delegating decision-making authority to lower levels of management and, in some cases, to nonmanagers authorized to make decisions, such as salespeople. Comment: It is particularly important in marketing that decisions are made by managers or others close to the company's markets. | |
| decentralized sales organization | In this organization, each division has its own sales force. This is appropriate when company divisions sell different products to different markets through different channels, and when the divisions are large enough to afford their own sales forces. | |
| deception | An unethical sales practice involving withholding information or telling "white lies." | |
| deceptive advertising | The advertising intended to mislead consumers by falsely making claims, by failure to make full disclosure, or by both. | |
| deceptive pricing | Savings claims, price comparisons, "special" sales, "two-for-one" sales, "factory" prices, or "wholesale" prices are unlawful if false or deceptive. When these terms are used, the terms and conditions of the sale must be made clear at the outset. False preticketing--the practice of marking merchandise with a price higher than that for which it is intended--is unlawful. | |
| decider | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| decision calculus models | The quantitative models of a process that are calibrated by examining subjective judgments about outcomes of the process (e.g., market share or sales of a firm) under a variety of hypothetical scenarios (e.g., advertising spending level, promotion expenditures). Once the model linking process outcomes to marketing decision variables has been calibrated, it is possible to derive an optimal marketing recommendation (Little 1970; Chakravarthi, Mitchell, and Staelin 1981; Little and Lodish 1981). Examples for advertising decisions include ADBUDG, ADMOD, and MEDIAL. Examples for overall brand/product decisions are BRANDAID and STRATPORT. Examples for salesforce decisions include CALLPLAN and DETAILER. | |
| decision maker | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| decision making | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| decision making, consumer | 1. (consumer behavior definition) The process of selecting from several choices, products, brands, or ideas. The decision process may involve complex cognitive or mental activity, a simple learned response, or an uninvolved and uninformed choice that may even appear to be stochastic or probabilistic, i.e., occurring by chance. 2. (consumer behavior definition) The process by which consumers collect information about choice alternatives and evaluate those alternatives in order to make choices among them. | |
| decision support system (DSS) | 1. (marketing research definition) A coordinated collection of data, system tools, and techniques with supporting software and hardware by which an organization gathers and interprets relevant information from business and the environment and turns it into a basis for making management decisions. 2. (models definition) A system, usually based on a model and computer software package, that describes the implications of specific marketing decisions and/or recommends specific marketing actions, using a set of input information. This information may either reside permanently in the DSS or be input for the particular scenario of interest (or both). The information can consist of primary information (e.g., sales and cost information from company records, or subjective judgments by managers about the likely impact of increased advertising spending) and/or secondary information (e.g., sales of competitors' products from a syndicated database constructed via store audits). An important aspect of many decision support systems is the facilitation of "what if" analyses; i.e., the sensitivity of optimal marketing strategy to the assumptions in the input information. | |
| decision variables, marketing | These correspond to the major marketing functions that influence revenue and profit. They are summarized in the well-known four P's: product, price, promotion, and place (distribution). Other marketing decision variables may include service policies, credit, and so forth. | |
| decision-making unit | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| decline stage | The fourth stage of a product life cycle. Sales of the product fall off from their levels during the maturity (third) stage. This may lead to abandonment or efforts at rejuvenation of the product. | |
| decompositional model | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| deep linking | Linking to a Web page other than a site's home page. | |
| Default Page | The default page setting should be set to whatever the default (or index) page is in your site's directories. Usually, this will be 'index.html', but on Windows IIS servers, it is often 'Default.htm' or 'index.htm'. This information allows Google Analytics to reconcile log entries such as 'http://www.example.com/' and 'http://www.example.com/index.html', which are in fact the same page. Without the Default Page information entered correctly, these would be reported as two distinct pages. Only a single default page should be specified.
Source: Lazworld | |
| defend market position | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| defender | A model representing customers' brand choice decisions as a function of brand attributes. Key features include the incorporation of heterogeneous customer preferences and the representation of attribute levels in a "per dollar" multiattribute space. Based on the model, several qualitative, normative implications hold regarding the optimal competitive response by "defending" brands against a new market entrant (Hauser and Gaskin 1984; Hauser and Shugan 1983). | |
| deferred billing | A billing method that enables customers to buy merchandise and not pay for it for several months, with no interest charge. | |
| deferred dating | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| deferred discount | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| deferred marking | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| deflation | An economic condition characterized by a continuous downward movement of the general price level. | |
| delivered price | A quoted or invoice price that includes delivery costs to the F.O.B. point, the latter being a freight terminal, warehouse, or another location commonly accepted in the particular trade or specifically agreed upon between buyer and seller. | |
| delivered pricing | A form of geographical pricing in which the price quoted by the manufacturer includes both the list price and the transportation costs. In such cases, the prices are quoted as F.O.B. destination, meaning the manufacturer bears the responsibility of selecting and paying for the method of transporting the product. | |
| delivery duty paid | Under this contract the seller undertakes to deliver the goods to the buyer at the place he or she names in the country of import with all costs, including duties, paid. The seller is responsible under this contract for getting the import license if one is required. | |
| delivery period | The normal time between the placing of an order and the receipt of stock. | |
| delivery reliability | The degree to which a seller delivers a product according to the schedule promised at the time of sale. | |
| Delphi technique | 1. (environments definition) A frequently used method in futures research to obtain the consensus opinion of a group of experts about likely future developments. A series of questionnaires is used with controlled feedback given to participants between rounds of questions. 2. (marketing research definition) A method of forecasting that relies on repeated measurement and controlled feedback among those participating along the following lines: (1) each individual prepares a forecast; (2) the forecasts are collected, and an anonymous summary is prepared by the person supervising the process; (3) the summary is distributed to each person who prepared a forecast; and (4) those participating in the process are asked to study the summary and submit a revised forecast. The process is repeated until the forecasts converge. | |
| demand | 1. (economic definition) A schedule of the amounts that buyers would be willing to purchase at a corresponding schedule of prices, in a given market at a given time. 2. (business executive definition) The number of units of a product sold in a market over a period of time. | |
| demand analysis | A study of the reasons underlying the demand for a product with the intent of forecasting and anticipating sales. | |
| demand creation | The use of price reductions and/or other incentives, such as premiums, rebates, etc., to create or increase immediate sales response for the product or service among consumers or resellers. | |
| demand curve | A graph of the quantity of a product taken by buyers in the market at various prices, given that all other factors are held constant. | |
| demand density | A measure of the extent to which potential demand for the retailer's goods and services is concentrated in certain census tracts, ZIP codes, or other geographic parts of the community. | |
| demand factors | The elements that determine the consumers' willingness and ability to pay for products. | |
| demand, industrial | The demand includes the goods and services that are required by all individuals and organizations that are engaged in the production of other goods and services. | |
| demand/destination areas | The departments in stores in which demand for their products or services are created before customers get to their destination. | |
| demand-backward pricing | The act of setting a price by starting with the estimated price consumers will pay and working backwards with retail and wholesale margins. | |
| demand-oriented pricing | A method of pricing in which the seller attempts to set price at the level that the intended buyers are willing to pay. It is also called value-in-use pricing or value-oriented pricing. | |
| demand-pulled innovation | Innovation that is caused or at least stimulated by the needs, wants, or desires of customers. This contrasts with supply pushed innovation. Other terms for these two ideas are market- or customer driven innovation and technology-driven innovation. | |
| demarketing | 1. (economic definition) A term used to describe a marketing strategy when the objective is to decrease the consumption of a product. 2. (social marketing definition) The process of reducing the demand for products or services believed to be harmful to society. | |
| demographic edition | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| demographic environment | The human population characteristics that surround a firm or nation and that greatly affect markets. The demographic environment includes such factors as age distributions, births, deaths, immigration, marital status, sex, education, religious affiliations, and geographic disperson-characteristics that are often used for segmentation purposes. | |
| demographic information | Based on the age, gender, life-cycle stage and occupation of consumers, as defined by Amsterdam-based European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research.
Source: IEG | |
| demographics | The study of total size, sex, territorial distribution, age, composition, and other characteristics of human populations; the analysis of changes in the make-up of a population. | |
| demography | 1. (economic definition) The study of people in the aggregate, including population size, age, sex, income, occupation, and family lifecycle. 2. (consumer behavior definition) The study of population characteristics such as age distribution, income, death rate, etc. | |
| demonstration model goods | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| demonstration, sales | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| demonstrations, as retailer sales promotion | An exhibition of a product in use or in its ultimate form as an inducement to prospective purchasers. Examples are preparation and dispensing of food products in supermarkets, sampling of beverages in liquor stores, or demonstration of cooking equipment in department stores all intended to call additional attention to the product or service. | |
| demurrage | A carrier charge incurred when freight cars are retained beyond the specified time allowed for loading or unloading. Railroads charge demurrage for delays in excess of 48 hours in returning a car to service. | |
| department store | A retail establishment that carries several lines of merchandise, such as women's ready-to-wear and accessories, men?s and boys' clothing, piece goods, small wares, and home furnishings, all of which are organized into separate departments for the purpose of promotion, service, accounting, and control. For Census purposes, it is an establishment normally employing 25 or more people and engaged in selling some items in each of the following lines of merchandise: furniture, home furnishings, appliances, radio and TV sets, a general line of apparel for the family, household linens, and dry goods. An establishment with total sales of less than $10,000,000 in which sales of any one of these groupings is greater than 80 percent of total sales is not classified as a department store. | |
| department store ownership group | An aggregation of centrally owned stores in which each store continues to be merchandised and operated primarily as an individual concern with central guidance rather than central management or direction. | |
| departmentalized specialty store | A term used to designate a concern organized in the same way as a department store but handling a narrower range of merchandise. | |
| departmentalizing | The process of classifying merchandise into somewhat homogeneous groups known as departments. | |
| depression | A phase of the business cycle characterized by a rapid decline in gross national product and employment. | |
| depth interview | An unstructured personal interview in which the interviewer attempts to get subjects to talk freely and to express their true feelings. | |
| derived demand | The demand for one product that is derived from the purchase of another. The demand for industrial products is created by the purchase of consumer products that use or incorporate industrial products in them or in their manufacture. | |
| description tag | An HTML tag used to provide a description for search engine listings. | |
| descriptive billing | A type of charge statement prepared for the customer in which a printout of the period's (usually a month) purchases appear on one statement with a description of the item purchased, the date, and the price but the original sales check is not included in the statement; only the description is. | |
| descriptive labeling | The use of descriptive information (e.g., size, ingredients, or use) on labels. This contrasts with grade labeling, in which code letters or numbers are used to describe the relative quality of goods. | |
| descriptive model | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| descriptive research | A research design in which the major emphasis is on determining the frequency with which something occurs or the extent to which two variables co-vary. | |
| designated market area (DMA) | The geographic area surrounding a city in which the broadcasting stations based in that city account for a greater share of the listening or viewing households than do broadcasting stations based in other nearby cities. It also is the specific geographic area to which a county in the United States is exclusively assigned on the basis of the television viewing habits of the people residing in the county. | |
| desire | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| destination merchandise | A type of merchandise that motivates or triggers a trip to a specific store. | |
| destination store | A store to which a consumer generally makes a special trip with the intent of shopping. | |
| detail salesperson | The missionary salesperson employed by a pharmaceutical company to call on physicians and attempt to get them to prescribe their firm's products. | |
| DETAILER | A decision calculus model providing a decision support system for allocating a salesforce's selling effort across the items in a firm's product line. The model's parameters are calibrated using subjective responses to a series of questions concerning projected sales under various levels of detailing effort and over various time periods (Montgomery, Silk, and Zaragoza 1971). | |
| detailing | The personal sampling and other promotional work among doctors, dentists, and other professional persons done for pharmaceutical concerns, in order to secure goodwill and possible distribution or prescription of the product. | |
| detention | A carrier charge incurred when trailers of motor carriers are retained beyond the specified loading or unloading time. The permitted time is specified in the tariff and normally is limited to a few hours. | |
| deterrence strategy | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| developing country | A country with semideveloped markets whose 1987 GNP per capita ranged from $1,001 to $2,500. The characteristics of this category of country are: (1) more than 33 percent of the population is engaged in agriculture and less than 30 percent of the population is urban; (2) at least 50 percent of the population is literate; and (3) there are often highly developed industrial sectors and consumer markets are also of significant size on a per capita basis. | |
| development function | Refer to "See Also" column to the right. | |
| development time | The time it takes to develop a new product, usually ex-pressed in months. Development time is a function of several factors, such as product complexity, newness, clarity of customer requirements, effectiveness of new product development process, prototyping quality, highly effective development leadership, priority, and prior experience. | |
| developmental research and development phase | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| DEX/UCS | The standard for electronic exchange that utilizes a uniform communications system to allow suppliers who ship direct store delivery to communicate invoice data to retailers at their receiving facilities. | |
| DHTML | Stands for Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language.
Source: SEMPO | |
| dialectic process | An evolutionary theory based on the premise that retail institutions evolve. The theory suggests that new retail formats emerge by adopting characteristics from other forms of retailers in much the same way that a child is the product of the pooled genes of two very different parents. | |
| dialog system | The part of a decision support system that permits users to explore the databases by employing the system models to produce reports that satisfy their particular information needs. It is also called a language sys-tem. | |
| dichotomous question | A fixed-alternative question in which respondents are asked to indicate which of two alternative responses most closely corresponds to their position on a subject. | |
| differential advantage | 1. (product development definition) A property of any product that is able to claim a unique-ness over other products in its category. To be a differential advantage, the uniqueness must be communicable to customers and have value for them. The differential advantage of a firm is often called its distinctive competences. 2. (economic definition) An ad-vantage unique to an organization; an advantage extremely difficult to match by a competitor. | |
| differentiated advantage | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| differentiated marketing | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| differentiated oligopoly | An oligopoly that produces and markets products that consumers consider close, but less than perfect, substitutes. e.g., automobiles. | |
| diffusion model | A model representing the contagion or spread of something through a population. Diffusion models in marketing often are applied to the adoption of a new product, or the exposure of potential customers to some in-formation about a product (e.g., an advertising message). Numerous specific mathematical formulations have been applied to diffusion processes, and these are reviewed by Lilien and Kotler (1983 Chapter 19) and Mahajan and Wind (1986). The most widely cited of these models was introduced to marketing by Bass (1969). It incorporates explicitly an innovation effect and an imitation effect. When both effects are present, the time path of adoption follows an S- shaped curve. | |
| diffusion of innovation | The process by which the use of an innovation is spread within a market group, over time and over various categories of adopters. | |
| diffusion process | The process by which new ideas and products become accepted by a society. | |
| diminishing marginal utility | A situation in which the marginal utility, i.e., the extra utility added by consumption of a last unit, tends to decrease. | |
| diminishing return | A situation in which after a point the extra output resulting from an increase in some in-put(s) relative to other fixed inputs tends to become less and less. | |
| diminishing utility | A situation in which consumption of successive new units of a good causes total utility to grow at an increasingly slower rate, i.e., psychological factors cause a consumer to have a lesser appreciation to the later units. | |
| direct advertising | A mass or quantity promotion, not in an advertising medium, but issued from the advertiser by mail or personal distribution to individual customers or prospects. Also, it is the advertising literature appearing in folders, leaflets, throw-aways, letters, and delivered to prospective customers by mail, salespeople, dealers, or tucked into mailboxes. | |
| direct channel | A channel whereby goods and services are sold directly from producer to final user without involvement of other independent middlemen. | |
| direct cost method of inventory | A sys-tem under which the cost value of each item sold is recorded along with the selling price so an accurate costing of sales may be obtained. | |
| direct costs | Costs incurred by and solely for a particular product, department, program, sales territory, or customer account. These may be fixed costs or variable costs. They also are called traceable costs or attributable costs. | |
| direct denial | A method for answering prospect objects by making strong statements indicating that the prospect has made an error. | |
| direct digital marketing | Direct digital marketing is defined as a digital marketing method that provides relevant marketing communications that are addressable to a specific individual with an email address, a mobile phone number or a Web browser cookie. Traditional direct marketing uses an individual’s postal address. With the evolution of direct marketing to direct digital marketing, addressability comes in the form of the three primary digital channels. | |
| direct exporting | The type of exporting in which firms enter foreign markets directly and do their own export marketing. The firm itself undertakes the complete export marketing task, which is extensive. Direct exporting includes choosing appropriate foreign markets, selecting agents or distributors to represent the firm in those markets, motivating and controlling those distributors choosing the product line for the target markets, setting prices and determining promotional strategies for those markets, handling international shipping and finance, and preparing export documentation. | |
| direct fixed costs | Costs that are incurred by and solely for a particular product or segment but which do not vary with an activity level. | |
| direct mail advertising | The use of the mail delivered by the U.S. Postal Service or other delivery services as an advertising media vehicle. | |
| direct marketing | 1. (retailing definition) A form of nonstore retailing in which customers are exposed to merchandise through an impersonal medium and then purchase the merchandise by telephone or mail. 2. (channels of distribution definition) The total of activities by which the seller, in effecting the exchange of goods and services with the buyer, directs efforts to a target audience using one or more media (direct selling, direct mail, telemarketing, direct-action advertising, catalog selling, cable selling, etc.) for the purpose of soliciting a response by phone, mail, or personal visit from a prospect or customer. | |
| direct product profitability (DPP) | 1. (physical distribution definition) The managerial accounting practice of allocating costs to specific products. It is a method of evaluating distribution alter-natives such as direct store delivery. It is also used to allocate shelf space in retail stores based on profitability. 2. (retailing definition) The profit on sale of a product after de-ducting the cost of the goods and only the expenses directly related to that particular product or product line. | |
| direct request method | A method for obtaining commitment from a customer by simply asking for the purchase order. (See also benefit summary method.) | |
| direct response advertising | An approach to the advertising message that includes a method of response such as an address or telephone number whereby members of the audience can respond directly to the advertiser in order to purchase a product or service offered in the advertising message. Direct response advertising can be conveyed to members of a target market by a wide variety of advertising media, including television, radio, magazines, mail delivery, etc. | |
| direct sales force | A sales force consisting of salespeople employed by the company for whom they sell products or services. | |
| direct selling | 1. (sales definition) A marketing approach that involves direct sales of goods and services to consumers through personal explanation and demonstrations, frequently in their home or place of work. 2. (retailing definition) The process whereby the firm responsible for production sells to the user, ultimate consumer, or retailer without intervening middlemen. | |
| direct selling establishment | An establishment primarily engaged in the retail sale of merchandise by telephone or house-to-house canvass or in the workplace. | |
| direct selling organization | A nonstore-retailing establishment that solicits orders and distributes its products direct to consumers. | |
| direct store delivery (DSD) | 1. (physical distribution definition) A system whereby goods are delivered to the buyer's store instead of going through a warehouse or distribution center. This can result in less handling and faster de-liveries, but does not necessarily result in lower costs. 2. (retailing definition) Delivery by a vendor directly to a retail store of a customer, as opposed to delivery to a distribution center operated by the customer. | |
| direct variable costs | Costs that vary directly with an activity level. | |
| directional and departmental signage | A signage system that helps guide the shopper through the shopping trip and locate specific departments of inter-est. | |
| Directory Search | Also known as search directory. Refers to a directory of web sites contained in an engine that are categorized into topics. The main difference between a search directory and a search engine is in how the listings are obtained. A search directory relies on user input in order to categorize and include a web site. Additionally, a directory usually only includes higher-level pages of a domain.
Source: SEMPO | |
| Dirichlet multinomial model | A probability mixture model commonly used to represent patterns of brand choice behavior. Over repeated occasions on which purchases are made from the product category, the set of brands chosen are assumed to follow the multinomial distribution for any given individual. The model also assumes that individuals differ from each other in their set of brand choice probabilities. These probabilities are taken to have a Dirichlet distribution across individuals. The Dirichlet is a parsimonious distribution for the set of brand choice probabilities: for n brands there are n Dirichlet distribution parameters; n - 1 of which indicate the average share of choices for each brand, and the nth indicating the amount of heterogeneity in preference across individuals. The model thus can be used to predict brand choice patterns exhibited over time by a set of individuals (Jeuland, Bass, and Wright 1980; Goodhardt, Ehrenberg, and Chatfield 1984). | |
| disagreement | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| disbursement | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| disclaimer statement | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| disconfirmation | In consumer satisfaction theory, disconfirmation refers to a situation in which a product performs differently than expected prior to purchase. Positive disconfirmation occurs when the product performs better than expected; negative disconfirmation occurs when the product performs worse than expected. | |
| discontinuous | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| discontinuous innovation | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| discount | A reduction in price. | |
| discount house | A retailing business unit, featuring consumer durable items, competing on a basis of price appeal and operating on a relatively low markup and with a minimum of customer service. | |
| discount store | Generally, a large retail store open to the public that incorporates aspects of supermarket merchandising strategy to a high degree, at-tempts to price merchandise at a relatively low markup, carries stock, and renders only limited types of consumer services, usually on the basis of a specific extra charge. It can be distinguished from regular retailers only by its consistent emphasis upon discount prices and its self-designation as a discount store. Much of the distinctive character has disappeared with the development of other forms of mass-market retailing. | |
| discrete choice behavior model | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| discrete-lot-sizing | An inventory management technique to help determine order quantities. The procurement objective is to obtain a quantity of components that equals the net requirement needed at a specific time. Purchase quantities will vary from order to order because of fluctuations in component requirements. | |
| discretionary buying power | The money in the hands of consumers after the payment of taxes and the purchase of necessities; popularly called hot money or loose money. | |
| discretionary income | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| discretionary spending | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| discriminant analysis | A statistical technique employed to model the relationship between a dichotomous or multichotomous criterion variable and a set of continuous predictor variables. | |
| discriminant consequences | The consequences that differ across a set of alter-natives that may be used as choice criteria. | |
| discriminant validity | A criterion imposed on a measure of a construct requiring that it not correlate too highly with measures from which it is supposed to differ. | |
| discriminative stimulus | A stimulus that by its mere presence or absence changes the probability of a behavior. For example, a 50 percent off sign in a store window could be a discriminitive stimulus. | |
| diseconomies of scale | The losses that stem from producing a larger amount rather than a small amount, i.e., higher per unit costs for a product are incurred as the scale of operations is increased. | |
| disengagement stage | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| disjunctive rule | As compared with the conjunctive rule or lexicographic rule, the disjunctive heuristic (or rule of thumb) assumes that the consumer develops acceptable standards for each dimension (which may be higher than the minimum cutoff levels for the conjunctive heuristic). According to Bettman, if a product, brand, or alternative passes that standard for any attribute, it is accepted. The evaluation process yields groups of acceptable and unacceptable alternatives and hence the evaluation is derived rather than direct. | |
| dispersion | The process of breaking down a supply of goods into smaller lots. It includes the sorting processes of allocation and sorting out. | |
| display | A special exhibit of a product at the point of sale, generally over and above standard shelf stocking. | |
| display allowance | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| display stock | The stock placed on various display fixtures that customers can directly examine. | |
| display type | The type on a printed page, brochure, poster, or other advertising material that is larger than the type used for the body copy. | |
| Display URL | The web page URL that one actually sees in a PPC text ad. Display URL usually appears as the last line in the ad; it may be a simplified path for the longer actual URL, which is not visible.
Source: SEMPO | |
| disposable income | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| disposable personal income (DPI) | 1. Personal income less federal, state, and local taxes. 2. A consumer's total money income less taxes paid to all government agencies; popularly shortened to disposable income. | |
| disproportionate stratified sampling | A stratified sample in which the individual strata or subsets are sampled in relation to both their size and their variability; strata exhibiting more variability are sampled more than proportionately to their relative size, while those that are very homogeneous are sampled less than proportionately. | |
| dissatisfaction | This occurs when pre-purchase expectations are negatively disconfirmed (the product performs worse than expected). | |
| dissection control | The subdividing of existing departments into relatively narrow groupings, then the establishing of dollar stock control records for each grouping. | |
| dissociative group | A reference group that an individual does not want to join or be similar to. | |
| dissonance reduction | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| distant line extension | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| distinctive competences | The strengths of the firm. That is, the particular characteristics of the firm that make it uniquely adapted to carry out its task(s) and to fulfill its purpose(s) in the industry within which it participates. The converse to the firm's distinctive advantages are its weaknesses, which inhibit and limit the ability of the firm to fulfill its purpose. | |
| distinctiveness | A uniqueness that one product or one firm has over others. The distinctiveness may exist in any attribute, and may only be perceived, not real. | |
| distinctiveness phase of the fashion cycle | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| distress merchandise | The goods that are (or soon will be) past the point where they can be sold at anything close to normal prices. This includes perishable, unfashionable, damaged, and unseasonal merchandise that still may have some market value. | |
| distribution | 1. (economic definition) A study of how factors of production are priced in the market place, i.e., the de-termination of rents, wages, interest, and profits. 2. (marketing definition) The marketing and carrying of products to consumers. 3. (business definition) The extent of market coverage. | |
| distribution center | A facility for the receipt, storage, and redistribution of goods to company stores or to customers. It may be operated by retailers, manufacturers, or distribution specialists. | |
| distribution channel | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| distribution manager | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| distribution models | In modeling the key decisions of which channel of distribution to choose, management can use any of the general models for option generation and evaluation. Specialized models have been developed, however, for specific distribution decisions such as site selection and logistics. Most of the gravitational site selection models follow Huff (1964), who developed a model in which the attraction of a site is proportional to the size of the retail center and inversely proportional to the customers' distance from the site. This model has been extended to incorporate not only size of retail site, but also image. These models are extensions of the Multiplicative Competitive Interaction model. Logistics-related optimization models have also been developed for warehouse locations and inventory management. Most of the models are based on mathematical programming or simulations. | |
| Distribution Network | A network of web sites (content publishers, ISPs) or search engines and their partner sites on which paid ads can be distributed. The network receives advertisements from the host search engine, paid for with a CPC or CPM model. For example, Google's advertising network includes not only the Google search site, but also searchers at AOL, Netscape and the New York Post online edition, among others.
Source: SEMPO | |
| distribution of income | The apportionment of money and real income of an economy among individuals. | |
| distribution requirements planning (DRP) | A planning technique that seeks to time-phase movement of products from manufacturing through the distribution channel. The objective is to forward allocate as little inventory as practical while satisfying customer service goals. | |
| distributive education | A formerly common federally assisted program of education for workers in the distributive trades occupations at the high school and adult training level augmented by state and local support. Class work in school facilities is combined with con-current work experience. | |
| distributive trades | The establishments that are engaged principally in marketing (wholesale trade, retail trade, and service industries). | |
| distributor | A wholesale middleman, especially in lines where selection or exclusive distribution is common at the wholesale level and the manufacturer expects strong promotional support. It is often a synonym for wholesaler. | |
| distributor's brand | A brand that is owned and controlled by a reseller (distributor) such as a retailer or a wholesaler, as opposed to a brand owned by the manufacturer. The term applies only to the brand itself, not to the product or to its content. It is often called a private brand or private label, and (with exceptions such as Sears' brands) is usually not advertised heavily. | |
| distributorship | A type of franchise sys-tem wherein franchisees maintain warehouse stock to supply other franchisees. The distributor takes title to the goods and provides services to other customers. | |
| district sales manager | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| diversification | A means whereby a business builds its total sales by identifying opportunities to build or acquire businesses that are not directly related to the company's current businesses. The major classes of diversification are concentric, horizontal and conglomerate. Concentric diversification results in new product lines or services that have technological and/or marketing synergies with existing product lines, even though the products may appeal to a new customer group. Horizontal diversification occurs when the company acquires or develops new products that could appeal to its current customer groups even though those new products may be technologically unrelated to the existing product lines. Conglomerate diversification occurs when there is neither technological nor marketing synergy and requires reaching new customer groups. | |
| diversion | 1. (physical distribution definition) The changing of the destination of a shipment while it is en route and prior to arrival at the originally planned destination. 2. (sales promotion definition) The situation in which agents or retailers in one part o? the country buy a product under deal conditions and then resell the product to channel members in another part of the country where the manufacturer is not offering the deal. | |
| diverters | 1. An unauthorized, but le-gal, member of a marketing channel. 2. Firms that buy unwanted merchandise from retailers and manufacturers and resell the merchandise to other retailers. | |
| divest strategy | The sale or liquidation of businesses or product lines in order to limit losses or in order to avoid predicted losses and/or because the resources freed up can be better used in other businesses. | |
| division manager | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| divisional organization | A form of organization that breaks the company into two or more business units (commonly called divisions). A division is a profit center and the division manager is responsible for attaining profit goals. A division may be responsible for a share of the company's existing product lines or for a separate business. The division manager reports to a top corporate executive. A division may be organized functionally or (as it expands) with the assistance of product managers, market managers, or category managers. | |
| DKI | Acronym for Dynamic Keyword Insertion, the insertion of the EXACT keywords a searcher included in his or her search request in the returned ad title or description. As an advertiser, you have bid on a table or cluster of these keyword variations, and DKI makes your ad listings more relevant to each searcher.
Source: SEMPO | |
| DMA | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| DMCA | Acronym for Digital Millennium Copyright Act. "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law which...criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services that are used to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works (commonly known as DRM), and criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, even when there is no infringement of copyright itself. [Circumvention of controlled access includes unscrambling, copying, sharing, commercial recording or reverse engineering copyrighted entertainment or software.] It also heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet." Source: Wikipedia
Source: SEMPO | |
| DMU | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| documentary collections (drafts) | This is a method of payment using a bill of ex-change. A bill of exchange is a negotiable instrument that is easily transferable from one party to another. | |
| dog | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| dollar control | The control of sales, stocks, markdowns, and markups in terms of dollars rather than in terms of pieces or items. | |
| dollar market share | "Market share is the percentage of a market (defined in terms of either units or revenue) accounted for by a specific entity."
Source: The MASB Common Language Project.
http://www.themasb.org/common-language-project/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_share | |
| Domain | A domain is the main subdivision of Internet addresses, the last three letters after the final dot, and it tells you what kind of organization you are dealing with. There are six top-level domains widely used: .com (commercial) .edu (educational),.net (network operations), .gov (US government), .mil (US military) and .org (organization). Other, two letter domains represent countries; thus;.uk for the United Kingdom, .dk for Denmark, .fr for France, .de for Germany, .es for Spain, .it for Italy and so on.
Source: Lazworld | |
| domain name | The Internet address an entity such as "www.marketingpower.com". | |
| domesticated markets | The markets that once were competitive that have been restructured as a result of voluntary, long-term binding agreements. A significant proportion of all transactions in these markets are planned and ad-ministered on the basis of negotiated rules of exchange. The benefits are reduced uncertainty, reduced transactions costs, and access to economies of scale. | |
| domestics | A subdivision of the piece goods classification of department store merchandise, including muslins, sheets, pillowcases, tubing, cotton, outing flannel, etc. | |
| donor market | A target audience asked to give money, goods, body organs, or blood to an organization or individual without expecting a tangible benefit in return. Comment: Donor marketing can be carried out by for-profit organizations. For-profit organizations can also be the recipients of the donations (although this is rare). | |
| door-to-door selling | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| doorway domain | A tool used to increase a Web site's position in search engine rankings. The doorway domain page is designed to score well on search engine processes, but the page itself takes users to the main domain when clicked. | |
| Doorway Page | A web page specifically created in order to obtain rankings within the natural listings of a search engine. These pages generally are filled with keywords and are meant to funnel surfers into the main web site. This practice is generally considered an outdated spam tactic. This term is not to be confused with a "landing page."
Source: SEMPO | |
| double exponential distribution | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| double stack | A system for stacking two containers vertically on a single railcar. This system doubles the carrying capacity of each railcar and significantly reduces product damage. | |
| double-barreled question | A question that calls for two responses and thereby creates confusion for the respondent. | |
| downsizing | An act of eliminating levels, units, groups, or individuals in an organization. | |
| downturn | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| DPI | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| DPP | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| draw | The money paid to salespeople against future commissions, usually in a period when commissions are low, in order to ensure that they may take home a specified minimum level of pay each month. | |
| drive | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| drop shipment | 1. (physical distribution definition) Limited-function wholesalers known as drop shippers seldom take physical possession of the goods. They often specialize in heavy or bulky commodities that require the economies of volume shipment. The drop shipper buys the car-load, but does not take physical possession. The order, or drop shipment, is shipped direct from the supplier to the customer. 2. (retailing definition) A special type of wholesaler who deals in large lots shipped direct from the factory to the customer of the drop shipper, takes title to the goods, assumes responsibility for the shipment after it leaves the factory, extends credit, collects the account, and incurs all the sales costs necessary to secure orders. | |
| DRP | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| DSD | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| DSS | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| dual career path, sales | The provision of a choice made available to junior salespeople in an organization to receive more pay and recognition through pro-motions to managerial positions or through promotions within the sales rank with compensation being similar at similar levels along each path. | |
| dual distribution | 1. (channels of distribution definition) This describes a wide variety of marketing arrangements by which a manufacturer or a wholesaler reaches its final markets by employing two or more different types of channels for the same basic product. 2. (retailing definition) Under this type of distribution program, manufacturers sell directly to contractors and other large accounts at prices equal to or less than those available to retailers in the same market who are reselling the manufacturers' products. | |
| dual sourcing | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| dummy | A preliminary layout for an ad, brochure, poster, or other printed advertising material showing the position and size of the headlines, subheads, body copy, and artwork. | |
| dumping | 1. (economic definition) The practice of selling a product at a lower price overseas than at home. 2. (global marketing definition) The practice of selling merchandise in foreign markets at lower prices than those charged in the domestic markets. | |
| duopoly | A market situation in which there are only two marketers of an economic good, while demand conditions re-main competitive. | |
| duplication | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| durable good | A consumer good that is used over an extended rather than a brief period of time. It is usually, but not necessarily, of more substantial manufacture. Examples are automobiles and furniture. | |
| dwell time | The amount of time customers spend waiting in line. | |
| dwelling unit | A single home, apartment, townhouse, or other unit in which a single person, family, or cohesive set of unrelated individuals reside. Typically, many goods are purchased in common. | |
| dyadic relationship | A relationship between two interacting and mutually influencing organizational entities. Most buyer-seller relationships in organizational markets are dyadic, while in the consumer marketplace individual buyers rarely have the power to influence sellers. | |
| Dynamic Landing Pages | Dynamic landing pages are web pages to which click-through searchers are sent that generate changeable (not static) pages with content specifically relevant to the keyword search. For example, if a user is looking for trucks, then a dynamic landing page with information and pictures on multiple models and, possible, geographically localized dealerships might be served. The term truck would trigger a data dump into a web site template for all possible vehicles, that serves all truck-related information.
Source: SEMPO | |
| dynamic programming | Refer to “See Also” column to the right. | |
| Dynamic Text (Insertion) | This is text, a keyword or ad copy that customizes search ads returned to a searcher by using parameters to insert the desired text somewhere in the title or ad. When the search query (for example, "hybrid cars") matches the defined parameter (for example, all brand of electric/gasoline passenger cars AND SUVs), then the associated term (hybrid) is plugged into the ad. Dynamic insertion makes the ad mirror exact terms used in the search query, creating very relevant ads.
Source: SEMPO | |