Design and Marketing Dictionary

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Home country

The country in which an international company is headquartered.

This term is used in connection with conducting discriminant analysis. During the formulation of the problem, the sample to be analyzed is divided into two samples. A holdout or validation sample is reserved for validating the discriminant function. In other words this sample is used to check the results of the estimation sample.

Holdout set

This term is used in the context of multidimensional scaling procedures. In MDS, generally two sets of data are obtained. The holdout set is the second set of data that is used to assess reliability and validity.

Home page

The first or main page of a website. This will usually contain links to other pages on the site. If the web site operator is advertising and offering goods and services, menus of these items will be displayed.

Home run

In the context of new product development it refers to a major new product project, entailing high risk and high investment. It contrasts with singles, which are improvement and near line extensions.

Hypothesis

A hypothesis is an unproven statement or proposition or “educated guess” about a factor or phenomenon that is of interest to the researcher. It may, for example, be a tentative statement about relationships between two or more variables as stipulated by the theoretical framework of the research. There are two types of hypotheses, null and alternative hypothesis.

Hypermarket

A huge retail outlet, usually over 100,000 square feet, which is typically discount-oriented, pioneered in Europe that blends an economy supermarket with a discount department store. It is even larger than a supercenter. It sells a wide variety of goods and performs some functions ordinarily performed by whole-sellers.

Homogeneous preferences

This refers to pattern of consumer preferences in terms of various attributes of a product or service. One of the preferences is known, as homogeneous preferences where all the consumers have roughly the same preferences. The market shows no natural segments.

Hedonic need

The need to achieve pleasure from a product; most likely associated with emotions or fantasies derived from consuming a product.

Heuristic

The mental rules-of-thumb that lead to a speedy decision when algorithms are unavailable. Commonly used in the new products field because solid experience data are rarely available. These are simplified or basic decision rules that can be use by a consumer to make a purchase choice, such as to buy the cheapest brand available.

Hedonic consumption

The multisensory, fantasy, and emotional aspects of consumers’ interactions with products. It involves use of a product to fulfill fantasies and satisfy emotions. Level of satisfaction cannot be determined in the same orderly manner in hedonic as in utilitarian consumption. It is more likely to be based on the pleasurable experiences that result from using the brand.

Horizontal retail audit

Analyzes a retail firm’s overall performance, from mission to goals to customer satisfaction to basic retail strategy mix and its implementation in an integrated, consistent way.

Horizontal channel conflict

One of the types of channel conflict, which involves conflict between the channel members at the same level within the channel. This type of channel conflict arises more in the Exclusive distribution if the territorial rights and boundaries are not well defined by the manufacturer.

High performance results

A retailer achieves high performance results when it achieves financial performance in the upper 25 percent of all retailers selling its merchandise lines in terms of profitability, liquidity, and growth.

Hidden assets

It refers to those depreciated assets, such as store buildings and warehouses that are reflected on a retailer's balance sheet at low values relative to their actual worth.

Hard currency

It is a currency, such as the US dollar and Japanese yen, that is usually fully convertible. Such currencies are also relatively stable in value or tend to be strong in comparison with other currencies. They are desirable assets to hold. Currencies that are not fully convertible are often called soft currencies or weak currencies.

Heightened attention

It refers to one of the types of information search process where a consumer pays more attention to the product information at a receptive level. In this state of information search a consumer simply becomes more receptive to the information, which comes to him or her and does not seek the information in an active manner.