Opinion leaders

Members or professionals within a particular consumer group who have significant influence on others because of their special achievements or background. Since the opinion leaders very often direct other consumers to buy and use certain products, and also certain brands, it has always been of concern for the marketers to distinguish opinion leaders in order to approach them efficiently.

Cash conversion cycle (CCC)

Accounting metric information for the manager within organizations that aims at measuring the time for which each investment in the production and sales process will bring cash flow from business’s customers. This metric helps keeping track on the periods of time needed to process sales of inventory, the periods of time needed to collect the receivables from customers/ clients and afforded periods of time negotiated to pay all suppliers without any penalties.

Customer relationship management (CRM)

Fundamental component of business processes within a company, involving all aspects of marketing communications, product development, and customer experience. CRM efforts focus customers in order to increase revenues, market shares and customer loyalty.

Compensation compression (Salary compression)

Business management issue concerning pay-rolls and HR good practices. In the field of sales and marketing it occurs when ranges in remunerations of senior and junior staff loose differentiation, i.e. become too narrow. It is considered to threaten internal trust, positive engagement of employees, equity perception within a company and productivity.

Deferral

Prepayment of expense or fee and since it is prepaid, it is recorded with a further delay in the accounting statements, depending on the closure of accounting year of the company that receives and/or pays the amount. Deferrals are referred to expenses, as well as to revenues.

Moore’s law

An observation, carrying the name of Gordon E. Moore (co-founder of Intel), who mentioned in a paper from 1965 that integrated transistors (computing powers) double every 18 months. Today's fast developing electronic world of digital devices is accurately referred to Moore's law: speed of processing, memory cababilities, sensory capacities, etc.

Marugakae

Japanese style of management literally, “total enveloped”. To explain as a term, it would refer identically to a little child held in the mother's arms and to an employee at the work position taken, i.e. entirely surrounded, engaged. It implies the collective approach to organising social entities, including in the corporate world. Deep reliance is cultivated in the members regarding all their pursuits - economic, political, religious, thus ensuring sustainable contol within the structures of people.

Customer performance scorecard

One of the tools used in managing and evaluating the marketing effort. This refers to a record which shows how well a company is doing year after year on various customer based measures in terms of percentages such as new customers, lost customers, win-back customers, satisfied-dissatisfied and neutral customers etc. norms are set for each measure and management takes corrective actions if these measures are found to be unsatisfactory.

Contact rate (K)

In the context of marketing research this refers to the measure used to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of interviewers in making contact with designated respondents. /// K = number of sample units contacted/total number of sample units approached.

Maximum chance criterion

Decision rule used in discriminant analysis to develop a comparison yardstick for assessing the predictive accuracy of the discriminant function; the maximum chance criterion holds that an object chosen at random should be classified as belonging to the largest size group.

Branch ( foreign )

Exclusively own foreign operation of a company that is not a separate entity from the parent that owns it.

Third-party logistics provider

An independent logistics provider that performs any or all of the functions required to get its clients' product to market.

Intrazonal trade

Trade among countries that are part of a trade agreement, such as the EU.

Channel management decisions

One of the important channel decisions where a company selects, trains, motivates, and evaluates the channel performance. Channel management must be modified over a period of time in order to keep them economically viable.

Activity management

A sales management style that concentrates on the behaviour of salespeople rather than on the outcomes of the behavior.

Reidenbach and Robin scale

It is a multi item, multi dimensional scale developed by Reidenbach and Robin used for measuring the ethical perceptions of managers.

Lobbyist

An individual who participates in advancing or otherwise securing passage of legislation by influencing public officials before and during the legislation process.

Arbitrary allocation

A method for setting the budget for advertising and promotion based on arbitrary decisions of top management.

Reinvestment

The use of retained earnings to replace depreciated assets or to add to the existing stock of capital.

Automatic response system

A software program designed to answer questions without human intervention.