Marketing Exam Glossary (from uploaded PPT decks)
Generated 2025-10-09
Marketing: The activities and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and
exchanging offerings that provide value to customers, clients, partners, and society.
Exchange: The trade of things of value between buyer and seller so each is better off after
the trade.
Market: People with both the desire and the ability to buy a specific offering.
Target Market: One or more specific groups of prospective consumers toward which an
organization directs its marketing program.
Marketing Mix (4Ps): The controllable factors product, price, promotion, and place used by
managers to solve a marketing problem.
Environmental Forces: Uncontrollable forces that affect a marketing decision: social,
economic, technological, competitive, and regulatory.
Customer Value: The unique bundle of benefits received by buyers (e.g., quality, convenience,
on-time delivery, service) at a given price.
Relationship Marketing: Linking the organization to customers, employees, suppliers, and
partners for their mutual long term benefit.
Marketing Program: A plan that integrates the marketing mix to provide a good, service, or
idea to prospective buyers.
Market Segments: Relatively homogeneous groups of buyers with common needs who respond
similarly to a marketing action.
Marketing Concept: The idea that a firm should satisfy consumer needs while also achieving
organizational goals.
Market Orientation: An organization-wide focus on continuously collecting customer
information, sharing it across departments, and using it to create value.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Identifying prospects, understanding them deeply, and
building favorable long term perceptions so they choose and advocate a brand.
Customer Experience: Customers internal response to all aspects of an organization and its
offering.
Societal Marketing Concept: Satisfying consumer needs in ways that also preserve or improve
society s well being.
Product: A good, service, or idea a bundle of tangible and intangible attributes that
satisfies needs in exchange for value.
Marketing Exam Glossary (from uploaded PPT decks)
Ultimate Consumers: Individuals/households who use products and services.
Organizational Buyers: Manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, service companies, nonprofits,
and government agencies that buy for use or resale.
Utility: The benefits users receive from a product: form, place, time, and possession
utility.
Consumer Behavior: The actions a person takes in buying and using products/services,
including the mental and social processes before and after these actions.
Purchase Decision Process: Five stages: problem recognition, information search, alternative
evaluation, purchase decision, and postpurchase behavior.
Involvement: The personal, social, and economic significance of a purchase to the consumer
(high: extended; medium: limited; low: routine problem solving).
Consumer Touchpoints: All brand points of contact with a consumer before, during, and after
purchase.
Consumer Journey Map: A visualization of the touchpoints a consumer encounters across the
purchase process.
Motivation: An energizing force that stimulates behavior to satisfy a need (e.g., Maslow s
hierarchy).
Maslow s Hierarchy of Needs: Human needs from basic to advanced: physiological, safety,
social, personal (esteem), and self actualization.
Personality: A person s consistent behaviors/responses to recurring situations; related
concept: self concept.
Perception: Selecting, organizing, and interpreting information to create a meaningful
picture of the world.
Selective Perception: Tendencies of exposure, comprehension, and retention that filter how we
process information.
Perceived Risk: Anxiety because outcomes of a purchase are uncertain and may have negative
consequences.
Learning: Behavioral change from repeated experience and/or reasoning (behavioral and
cognitive learning).
Stimulus Generalization/Discrimination: Generalization: response from one stimulus extends to
another; Discrimination: ability to detect differences among stimuli.
Brand Loyalty: A favorable attitude toward and consistent purchase of a single brand over
Marketing Exam Glossary (from uploaded PPT decks)
Brand Loyalty: A favorable attitude toward and consistent purchase of a single brand over
time.
Attitude: A learned predisposition to respond to an object in a consistently favorable or
unfavorable way.
Beliefs: Subjective perceptions of how a product/brand performs on attributes, based on
experience and information.
Opinion Leaders: Individuals who exert social influence over others.
Word of Mouth: The influencing of people during conversations, including via social media.
Reference Groups: Groups used for self appraisal or personal standards (associative,
aspiration, dissociative); includes brand communities.
Family Life Cycle: Distinct phases families move through from formation to retirement, each
with characteristic purchase behaviors.
Social Class: Relatively permanent, homogeneous divisions in a society based on shared
values, interests, and behaviors.
Subcultures: Subgroups within a national culture with unique values, ideas, and attitudes.
Business to Business (B2B) Marketing: Marketing products and services to organizations for
use in creating other offerings or for resale.
Organizational Buyers (B2B): Manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, services, nonprofits, and
government agencies that buy for use or resale.
NAICS: The North American Industry Classification System, a shared industry coding system for
the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
Derived Demand: Demand for industrial products/services that is driven by demand for consumer
products/services.
Organizational Buying Behavior: How organizations recognize needs, identify, evaluate, and
choose among brands and suppliers.
Buying Center: People in an organization who participate in the buying process (roles: users,
influencers, buyers, deciders, gatekeepers).
Buy Classes: Three buying situations: straight rebuy, modified rebuy, and new buy.
Buyer Seller Relationships: Often involve complex negotiations; may include reciprocity or
supply partnerships; sustainable procurement integrates environmental concerns.
E Marketplaces: Online trading communities that connect buying and supplier organizations for
real time exchange (also called B2B exchanges or e hubs).
Marketing Exam Glossary (from uploaded PPT decks)
Traditional Auction: Online format with one seller and many buyers; price typically rises
with more bids.
Reverse Auction: Online format with one buyer soliciting bids from many sellers; price
typically falls as competition increases.
Globalization: Growing economic, cultural, political, and technological interdependence among
countries.
Balance of Trade: Difference between the monetary value of a nation s exports and imports.
Countertrade: Using barter rather than money for global sales.
Protectionism: Shielding domestic industries from foreign competition, typically through
tariffs or quotas.
Tariffs: Taxes on imports that tend to raise prices of foreign goods.
Quotas: Limits on the amount of a product allowed to enter or leave a country.
World Trade Organization (WTO): Institution that sets rules governing trade and adjudicates
disputes between member nations.
Trade War: A sequence of retaliatory tariff/quota actions as countries try to damage each
other s trade.
Economic Integration: Regional agreements that reduce trade barriers (e.g., EU, USMCA, RCEP).
Global Competition: When firms originate, produce, and market their offerings worldwide.
Multidomestic Strategy: Multinational firms vary products/brands/ads to fit each country s
market.
Global Marketing Strategy: Transnational firms standardize where cultures are similar and
adapt where they differ.
Global Brand: A brand marketed under the same name in multiple countries with coordinated
programs.
Global Consumers: Groups across countries with similar needs seeking similar benefits from
products/services.
Cross Cultural Analysis: Studying similarities and differences among consumers across
nations.
Customs: What s considered normal and expected in a specific country.
Cultural Symbols: Things that represent ideas within a culture; semiotics studies meanings
and roles of symbols.
Back Translation: Retranslating a translated phrase into the original language to catch
Marketing Exam Glossary (from uploaded PPT decks)
Back Translation: Retranslating a translated phrase into the original language to catch
errors/unintended meanings.
Consumer Ethnocentrism: Belief that it s inappropriate to purchase foreign made products.
Currency Exchange Rate: Price of one country s currency expressed in terms of another s.
Exporting: Producing in one country, selling in another (indirect or direct).
Licensing: Granting rights to a trademark, patent, or trade secret to a foreign company for a
fee.
Joint Venture: A foreign and a local firm invest together to share ownership, control, and
profits.
Direct Investment: Owning a foreign subsidiary; highest commitment, risk, and control.
Dumping / Gray Market: Dumping: selling below cost; Gray market: parallel importing via
unauthorized channels.
Market Segmentation: Aggregating buyers into groups with common needs who respond similarly
to marketing actions.
Product Differentiation: Using different marketing mix actions so consumers perceive a
product as different/better than competitors.
Market Product Grid: A framework relating market segments to products or marketing actions.
Bases for Consumer Segmentation: Geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral
(including usage rate).
Usage Rate: Quantity consumed or patronage during a time period; frequency marketing focuses
on usage.
80/20 Rule: About 80% of sales come from 20% of customers.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Financial worth of a customer over the relationship.
Organizational Segmentation: Geographic (statistical area), demographic (NAICS, # employees),
behavioral (usage rate).
Cannibalization: When a new product/segment steals sales from the firm s existing offerings.
Tiffany/Walmart Strategy: Serving both high end and low end segments with differentiated
offerings.
Positioning: The place a product occupies in consumers minds on key attributes relative to
competitors.
Repositioning: Changing the location of a product in consumers minds relative to
competitors.
Marketing Exam Glossary (from uploaded PPT decks)
Perceptual Map: A two dimensional diagram showing how consumers perceive competing
products/brands.
Personas: Fictional character descriptions that bring target market data to life for
marketers.
Product (Goods, Services, Ideas): A bundle of attributes that satisfies needs; goods can be
durable or nondurable; services are intangible activities/benefits.
Consumer Products: Items purchased by the ultimate consumer (convenience, shopping,
specialty, unsought).
Business (Industrial) Products: Items organizations buy to assist in providing other products
for resale.
Four I s of Services: Intangibility, inconsistency, inseparability, inventory (and the issue
of idle production capacity).
Gap Analysis (Services): Comparing customers expectations vs. experiences across service
quality dimensions.
Product Item/Line/Mix: Item: specific brand/size/price SKU; Line: closely related items; Mix:
all product lines of a firm.
Newness (Consumer Learning): Continuous, dynamically continuous, and discontinuous
innovations require increasing learning.
Newness (Organization): Line extension, brand extension, innovation jumps (radical
inventions).
Protocol: Statement of target market, consumer needs, and what the product will be and do.
Open Innovation: Using internal and external ideas and collaboration to develop offerings.
New Product Development Process: Seven stages: strategy development, idea generation,
screening/evaluation, business analysis, development, market testing, commercialization.
Market Testing Methods: Standard, controlled, and simulated test markets.