Understanding Marketing Terms and Concepts

1. Market segmentation: Dividing the market for a product into subsets of customers who behave in the same way, have similar needs, or have similar characteristics that relate to purchase behavior.
2. Intermarket segments: Well-defined, similar clusters of customers across national boundaries that let firms standardize marketing programs and offerings for each segment globally.
3. Targeting: Selecting which segments in a market are appropriate to focus on and designing the means of reaching them.
4. Product differentiation: Circumstance in which a firm's offerings differ or are perceived to differ from those of competing firms on any attribute, including price.
5. Measurability: The degree to which the size and purchasing power of segments can be assessed.
6. Accessibility: The degree to which a firm can reach intended target segments efficiently with its products and communications.
7. Substantialness: The degree to which identified target segments are large enough or have sufficient sales and profit potential to warrant unique or separate marketing programs.
8. Durability: The stability of segments and whether distinctions between them will diminish or disappear as the product category or the markets themselves mature.
9. Differential responsiveness: The degree to which market segments exhibit varying responses to different marketing mix combinations.
10. Bases for segmentation: The distinguishing characteristics in a market around which market segments (such as demographics, benefits sought) within a firm's overall product or service market.
11. Geodemographics: The combination of geographic information and demographic characteristics; used in segmenting and targeting specific segments.
12. Psychographic or lifestyle research: A concept for dividing a market into lifestyle segments on the basis of consumer interests, values, opinions, personality traits, attitudes, and demographics to develop marketing communications and product strategies.
13. Values and Lifestyles Program VALS2: A lifestyle program from SRI International that segments consumers into eight groups: actualizers, fulfillers, believers, achievers, strivers, experiencers, makers, and strugglers.
14. Benefit segmentation: Segmenting the market by the attributes or benefits consumers need or desire, such as quality, service, or unique features.
15. Undifferentiated strategy: Marketing a single product using a single promotional mix for the entire market; most often used early in the life of a product category.
16. Differentiated strategy: Using different marketing strategies for different segments; either marketing a unique product and communications campaign to each segment , or marketing a common product to different segments with various communication strategies.
17. Concentrated strategy: A strategy in which a firm seeks a large share of one or a few profitable segments of the total market; often concentrating on serving the selected segments innovatively and creatively.
18. Countersegmentation: Combining market segments to appeal to a broad range of consumers and assuming an increasing consumer willingness to accept fewer product and service variations for lower prices.
19. Majority fallacy: Pursuing large "majority" market segments because they offer potential gains, while overlooking the fact that they also may attract overwhelming competition.
20. Market potential: The maximum amount of industry sales possible for a product or service over a specific period.
21. Market forecast: The amount of sales predicted based on the amount of marketing effort (expenditures) put forth by all companies competing to sell a particular product or service in a specific period.
22. Sales potential: The maximum amount of sales a specific firm can obtain for a specified time period.
23. Surveys of buyers' intentions: Sales forecast based on surveys of what either consumers or organizational buyers say they will do; such are most reliable when the buyers have well-formed intentions and are willing to disclose them accurately.
24. Expert opinion: A qualitative approach to forecasting sales in which analysts ask executives within the company or other experts to provide forecasts based on their own judgement.
25. Composite of salesforce estimates: A means of forecasting sales in which sales reps give their forecasts for their territories, which can then be combined.
26. Trend analysis: A quantitative forecasting approach that examines historical sales data patterns (also known as time-series analysis).
27. Market tests: Marketing a new product in test locations using the planned promotion, pricing, and distribution strategies.
28. Statistical demand analysis: Sales forecasting method from equations in which price promotion, distribution, competition, and economic factors are independent variables.
29. Positioning: Developing an overall image for a product or brand by designing a marketing program, including the product mix, that a segment's customers will perceive as desirable.
30. Repositioning: Developing new marketing programs to shift consumer beliefs and opinions about an existing brand..
31. Perceptual maps: Spatial representations of consumer perceptions of products or brands, used to evaluate brand positions in a market.
32. Micromarketing: Using computer analysis of census and demographic data to identify clusters of households that share similar consumption patterns (for example, the PRIZM market segmentation system).