The Hindu Business Line : `Exclusive curve effects' and `strip malls'

Kaleem Mohammed Khan and Mohammed Naved Khan of Aligarh Muslim University have written a reference book that should be useful to those in sales: The Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Marketing, from Response (www.indiasage.com) . The authors pack in more than 5,000 entries, and embellish the pages with charts and examples, all the while adopting a simple style to reduce the pain normally involved in learning about the essential concepts and terms used in marketing.

As with any dictionary, you can tap into the wisdom of the Khans by directly thumbing to the word or phrase that bothers you, or even idly check your understanding of terms that may be familiar. But, as with any dictionary, again, there can be occasions when you stumble upon things that seem totally new.

For instance, do you know that `Maquilaadora' is `an industrial arrangement between the Mexican and the US governments in which US-sourced components are shipped to Mexico duty-free, assembled into final products and re-exported to the US'? Or, that `strip malls' refer to `a cluster of stores, usually housed in one long building serving a neighbourhood's needs for groceries, hardware, laundry and other consumer goods'?

Rather than fret that your `awareness threshold' needs tweaking, or fume, as when faced with an `avoidance-avoidance conflict', it is better to pay `attention', which is defined as "the selective process of noticing a stimulus or certain portions of it."

Market challengers may use `bypass attack' to take on the market leader, by attacking easier markets. But `buyphases' are the eight stages that a business buyer goes through, viz. "problem recognition, general need-description, product specification, supplier search, proposal solicitation, supplier selection, order-routine specification, and performance review."

Let's cut to `C', where we see `cut case' as an inexpensive display, "in which merchandise is left in the original carton." In `D', DAGMAR appears before `daily inch rate' and it is an acronym meaning `defining advertising goals for measured advertising results' — an approach developed by Russell Colley in 1961.

Stop at `E' for `exclusive curve effects', which refer to `increased efficiency due to economies of scale and increased effectiveness due to accumulated knowledge'. Try `extra dating' as a way of getting cash discounts from the manufacturer. Lest you begin imagining things, the authors explain the phrase as a method of billing that allows for cash discount and the full payment period begins a few `free days' after the merchandise has been received by the buyer.

It pays to be successful, but what is `failure fee'? Khan and Khan explain the term as "a trade promotion arrangement whereby a marketer agrees to pay a penalty fee if a product stocked by a retailer does not meet agreed-upon sales levels."

G begins with GAAP, which your local CA would explain as `generally accepted accounting principles'. Okay, what is gerontographics? "A segmentation approach that divides the mature market into groups based on both levels of physical well-being and social conditions such as becoming a grandparent, or losing a spouse."

Hypermarkets may soon be an Indian reality, when those huge retail outlets, `usually over 1,00,000 square feet', spring up around. Which is when consumers may experience `hyper reality,' losing "the ability to distinguish between reality and fiction."

Recommended addition to your reading list.

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com

D. Murali