Glossary

Accessory/feature
Characteristics that are offered to the potential consumer, or that are sought out or desired as an attribute of form, time, place, and possession utility. An accessory is not essential in and of itself, but adds beauty, convenience, or effectiveness to what it is attached.
Accuracy
Degree of closeness between predictions and real values.
Aggregation
Bringing together single objects (for example, records, profiles, topics) with the same characteristics to a (higher‐level) group. Form of segmentation that assumes most consumers are alike.
Algorithm
Software based on a mathematical formula for analysing data sets. An algorithm is a processing rule that can be processed automatically (by a computer) because it is extremely precisely defined and formulated (universal, unambiguous, executable, ends after a fixed time/number of steps). For example, the rules of search engines are algorithms.
Analytics
Investigation and interpretation of data. Algorithms and statistical methods are used, software and hardware, special tools and sufficient computer capacity are required.
API
Application programming interface, used for data exchange, for example with social networks.
App
Abbreviation for application software. Software programs, usually small and processing specific tasks, created for smartphones and for installation on the PC (web apps). Users can buy them or download them for free (such as games, calendar, music, GPS, and cooking recipes).
Augmented reality (AR)
Computer aided perception or representation, which extends the real world to virtual aspects. Mix of real world and computer‐generated imagery or audio to simulate a real situation or environment. This allows the reader/potential customer to interact or react with advertisement. Used in print and electronic promotion (webcams on the Internet)
B2B
Business to business: business between companies (say a fabric manufacturer/weaving and clothing manufacturer/fashion)
B2C
Business to consumer: business between companies and individual consumers (say retailers and private customers).
Beacon
Mini transmitters that can be installed (almost) anywhere. If a smartphone user approaches a beacon, the transmitter registers them via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and can transmit a message to the smartphone.
Behavioural pricing
Dynamic pricing. Prices are adjusted promptly to changes in demand and customer behaviour. For the same product/service, different customer segments are displayed different prices at the same time/over the same time period.
Behavioural targeting/behaviour targeting
Information about the client, his interests and intentions (age, sex, whereabouts, online behaviour, visited pages, purchase categories, for which they have registered and so on) are collected, analysed and added to their profile. The goal is to display ads/offers to them, that match their profile and are therefore relevant no matter the context in which they are moving.
Bias
Statistical term: degree in which an expected value differs from a true value. Bias can occur when measurements are not properly calibrated or if subjective opinions are accepted without verification.
Big data
The term ‘big data’ refers to the economically viable acquisition and use of decision‐relevant findings from highly diverse, differently structured information, which is subject to rapid change, originates from the most varied sources, and arises on an unprecedented scale. It includes concepts, methods, technologies, IT architectures and tools that help to channel the information flow. Such a large volume of data, emerging in such great variability and speed, requires the development of new analytical methods to discover relevant, valuable patterns in it.
Big data analytics
Investigation and interpretation of large volumes of highly diverse, differently structured, fast‐changing data. Algorithms and statistical methods are used, and software and hardware, special tools and sufficient computer capacity are required.
Bot
Abbreviation for ‘robot’: crawler, web crawler, spider. Software programs created to scan the web, for example finding key words, indexing web pages (search engines), updating content, gathering specific data (web scraping) and so on.
Brand value
Actual profits that a brand achieves, expected profits, reputation, prestige, market value.
Bundling
Combining products as a package, often to introduce other products or services to the customer. Example: AT&T offers discounts for customers by combining two or more of the following services: cable television, home phone service, wireless phone service, and internet service.
Business intelligence (BI)
The general term for the identification, origin and analysis of data.
Business plan
A strategic document showing cash flow, forecasts and direction of a company.
Business strategy
States the goals of a company and how to achieve them.
Buying behaviour
The process that buyers go through when deciding whether or not to purchase goods or services. Buying behaviour can be influenced by a variety of external factors and motivations, including marketing activity.
Cache
A storage area for frequently accessed information. Retrieval of the information is faster from the cache than the originating source. There are many types of cache including RAM cache, secondary cache, disk cache, and cache memory to name a few.
Characteristic
Distinguishing feature or attribute of an item, person, or phenomenon that usually falls into either a physical, functional, or operational category.
Churn prevention
Early detection of impending customer attrition and its prevention.
Click rate/click‐through rate
Percentage of times a user responded to an advertisement by clicking on the ad button/banner. CTR is one metric Internet marketers use to measure the performance of an ad campaign. Calculation: dividing the number of clicks on an ad by the number of advertising media contacts (ad impressions).
CLV
Customer lifetime value. The profitability of customers during the lifetime of the relationship, as opposed to profitability on one transaction.
Code
Anything written in a language intended for computers to interpret.
Competitive advantage
The product, proposition or benefit that puts a company ahead of its competitors.
Compliance
Adherence to laws and regulations. Compliance processes are used in enterprises to avoid risks so as not to violate certain requirements, for example in the field of data protection or IT security.
Confidence Intervals
(CI) – Statistical interval (calculated from observations) that explores the value range in which the population parameter of interest is expected with a certain probability. CIs are calculated whenever parameters are estimated from statistical models.
Connected car
Part of the IoT: Vehicle with equipment for internal and/or external networking. Internally, the vehicle systems communicate with each other, externally it is connected to the Internet and/or WLAN. If E‐Call (automatic emergency call system) for new cars is required in the EU as of March 2018, each newly built car will be a ‘connected car’.
Conversion rate
Percentage of clicks that generate sales or leads. This number is given by dividing the number of sale/leads by the number of clicks send to the offer. For example, if 100 clicks generated 100 visitors to your site, and they generate five sales/leads then your conversion rate would be 20%.
Cookie
Cookies are small text files stored on a user’s computer when they visit a web page. Only the server that stored it can read a cookie. With the help of a cookie, for example, users remain logged into a portal or mail account. Cookies can help determine whether the user visited the page repeatedly or already saw an advertisement before. Cookies do not identify people, but only the browser, which can also be set to refuse cookies or delete them regularly.
Coupon
A ticket that can be exchanged for a discount or rebate when procuring an item.
CRM
Customer relationship management: coherent management of a company’s contacts and interactions with current and potential future customers including capture, storage, analysis of current and historical data, internal process information. The goal is to improve customer loyalty, retention and sales/profit. See: digital CRM, social CRM, analytical CRM.
Cross‐channel marketing
Use of a one marketing channel (internet, social web, direct mail) to support or promote other channels (online‐shop, retailing and so on).
Crossmedia
The networking of various advertising channels. A cross‐media campaign is running, for example, on TV, online and on mobile sites. Case studies show that a campaign’s effectiveness can be increased by cross‐media networking.
Customer journey
Contacts – advertising measures, sales process, aftersales, customer service, repurchase, up until the dissolution of the business relationship – that a consumer goes through.
Customer lifetime value
CLV. The profitability of a customer during the lifetime of the relationship, as opposed to profitability on one transaction.
Customer loyalty
Feelings or attitudes that incline a customer either to return to a company, shop or outlet to purchase there again, or else to re‐purchase a particular product, service or brand.
Customer profile
Profile. Description of a customer group or type of customer based on various geographic, demographic, and psychographic characteristics; also called ‘shopper profile’ (may include income, occupation, level of education, age, gender, hobbies, or area of residence and so on). Profiles provide knowledge needed to select the best prospect lists and to enable advertisers to select the best media.
Customer satisfaction
Customers’ state of mind about a company when their expectations have been met or exceeded, most often leading to brand loyalty and product repurchase.
Customer/consumer touchpoint
Where the customer/consumer interacts with the business, such as making a purchase or responding to a promotion.
Data
Facts/figures pertinent to customer, consumer behaviour, marketing and sales activities.
Data aggregation
Collecting data from various sources for the preparation of a report or an analysis.
Data acquisition systems
Sensors, scanners, apps, devices, processes, websites, and so on.
Data awareness
People are more conscious about the value of their personal data, have more openness to exploring data, more determination to putting it to good use.
Data capital
Value contained in the data, only assessable when data is turned into information.
Data cleaning
Correcting or removing old, corrupt or inaccurate data.
Data enrichment
Combining information from different sources to obtain information of greater quality for the end user (see data fusion).
Data mining
A process of analysing data from different perspectives or angles for use in such marketing activities as increasing revenue and cutting costs. It includes the usage of powerful algorithms to analyse data to identify patterns or relationships in that data.
Data preparation
Making data fit for intended analysis. Data preparation should be done on the full dataset if deployment will apply to the whole dataset. If deployment is not intended for the whole dataset, for example if one is just looking for patterns or to understand the data, data preparation/analysis can be carried out on a subset or sample.
Data processing
The obtaining, recording and holding of information which can then be retrieved, used, disseminated or erased. The term tends to be used in connection with computer systems, and today is often used interchangeably with ‘information technology’.
Data warehouse
A collection of data which is gathered for the specific purpose of analysis; the relevant data is quality‐checked and then processed. In a data warehouse, data is stored at the finest available granularity. Historical data is mapped, data history and external data constitute a large role. Serves as an enterprise‐wide database for a whole range of applications to support analytical tasks for specialists and executives. Customer/specific tops oriented. There are three types of data warehouses: central, distributed and virtual database warehouses.
Database marketing
Customer information, stored in an electronic database, is utilised for targeting marketing activities. Information can be a mixture of what is gleaned from previous interactions with the customer and what is available from outside sources. Also see ‘Customer relationship management (CRM)’.
DB
Database: a component of a data warehouse, storage of the data.
DBM
Database management.
DBMS
Database management system: component of a data warehouse, containing metadata on loading, error detection, constraints and validation.
Demographics
Statistics regarding socioeconomic factors (sex, age, race, religion, nationality, education, income, occupation, family size, and so on). In marketing, used as a basis for the segmenting consumers.
Distributed database warehouse
Different departments run their own data warehouses optimised for their needs.
Domain
A domain is the main subdivision of Internet addresses; the last three letters after the final dot, which tells you what kind of organisation you are dealing with. There are six top‐level domains widely used:.com (commercial).edu (educational),.net (network operations),.gov (US government),.mil (US military) and.org (organisation). Other two‐letter domains represent countries:.uk for the United Kingdom,.dk for Denmark,.fr for France,.de for Germany,.es for Spain,.it for Italy and so on.
Domain knowledge
General knowledge about in‐depth business issues in specific industries that is necessary to understand idiosyncrasies in the data.
Dynamic pricing
Behavioural pricing: sudden or frequent pricing fluctuations based on changes in customer demand and behaviour. Different consumer segments will see different pricing for the same product or service at the same time and over a time period.
E‐Commerce (electronic commerce)
Any business transaction that takes place via electronic platforms.
ENBIS
European Network of Business and Industrial Statistics
ERP
Enterprise resource planning: includes all the processes around billing, logistics and real business processes.
ETL
Extraction, transforming and loading, which cover all processes and algorithms that are necessary to take data from the original source to the data warehouse.
Experimental design
see DoE.
Exposure
Presentation of a sales promotion piece or advertisement to an individual, such as a person viewing a television commercial or a reader opening a magazine to an advertisement page. The number of exposures achieved is an important measure of the effectiveness of an advertisement as measured in conjunction with the quality of the exposures achieved. (Also see ‘Frequency’). For example, if a golf club advertisement is exposed to 1000 golfers; it has greater value than if it is exposed to 1 million non‐golfers.
External data
Owned by a third party: social network data, credit rating or data about the area the customer lives in.
External data sources
Eurostat, ONS, government statistical offices, national statistics institutes.
Feature/accessory
Characteristics that are offered to the potential consumer that are sought out or desired as an attribute of form, time, place, and possession utility. An accessory is not essential in and of itself, but adds beauty, convenience, or effectiveness to what it is attached.
Focus groups
A tool for market research where small groups of customers are invited to participate in guided discussions on the topic being researched.
Forecast
The use of experience and/or existing data to learn/develop models that will be used to make judgements about future events and potential results.
Forecasting
Calculation of future events and performance.
Freeware
Shareware, or software, that can be downloaded from the Internet for free.
Frequency
Number of times an advertising message is presented within a given time period. In general, the number of times something occurs within a specified period of time. Frequency may refer to the issues of a periodical, the purchases made by a customer over time, or the number of times a commercial or an advertisement is aired or printed or reaches its audience. (Also see ‘Exposure’).
Front end applications
Interfaces and applications mainly used in customer service and help desks, especially for contacts with prospects and new customers.
GPS
Global Positioning System, based on satellites (at least 24) that orbit the earth at an average of 20,200 km above the earth’s surface every two star days. These satellites send their current position and the exact time by coded radio signals to earth. At least four GPS satellites are required for position determination. From the positions and time sent by these GPS satellites, a GPS device calculates its current position. The speed at which it moves the GPS unit will calculate from the time needed to cover the distance between two determined GPS coordinates. Today, GPS receivers are included in many commercial products, such as automobiles, smartphones, exercise watches, and so on.
Hacker
Originally used to describe a computer enthusiast who pushed a system to its highest performance through clever programming.
Heat map
Graphic representation of data where varying degrees of a single metric appear by colour, such as tracking clicks on a marketer’s website.
Hypothesis
A proposal that is to be tested.
ID
Unique identity code for cases or customers used internally in a database.
In‐database analytics
Integration of the analytical methods into the database. The advantage is that the data doesn’t have to be moved for the evaluation.
Industry 4.0
Networked machines, artificial intelligence in production. For example, assembly robots can now automatically supply spare parts (in the depot or directly at the supplier) if their stock falls below a certain limit.
Information quality dimensions
Relevance, accuracy, timeliness and punctuality, accessibility, interpretability, coherence, and credibility (OECD), relevance of statistical concept, accuracy of estimates, timeliness and punctuality in disseminating results, accessibility and clarity of the information, comparability, coherence, and completeness (Eurostat)
In‐memory/in‐memory database
Database system that uses the main memory for data storage.
Intelligent household
Smart home. Umbrella term for technical processes and systems in residential rooms and buildings focusing on an increase in living, living quality, safety, and efficient use of energy on the basis of networked and remote controllable devices and installations, and automated processes. Everyday use of smart gadgets like electricity smart meters, voice controlled security, lighting and heating
Internal data
Part of the business (product data, invoice data, customer personal data, sales, contracts and so on). In principle, internal data should be readily available for further analysis. In practice, the data is often difficult to access, belongs to different systems and is owned by different stakeholders. In a well‐organised, data‐aware company, the quality of internal data may be better than that from external resources, not least because the company can control exactly how and when it is generated.
Internal data sources
Internal operational systems: CRM, marketing database, payment control, warehouse, planning/forecasting, web servers, adserver technology systems, newsletter systems
Internet of things (IoT), web of things
In the internet of things, objects from everyday life are equipped with an internet connection. So the object’s data is provided online to people. This is used, for example, in household appliances to enable the residence to control power consumption via the internet in real time.
IP address
Internet protocol address. Every system connected to the Internet has a unique IP address, which consists of a number in the format A.B.C.D where each of the four sections is a decimal number from 0 to 255. Most people use domain names instead and the resolution between domain names and IP addresses is handled by the network and the domain name servers. With virtual hosting, a single machine can act like multiple machines (with multiple domain names and IP addresses).
Keyword
A word – or often phrase – used to focus an online search. A keyword is a database index entry that identifies a specific record or document. Keyword searching is the most common form of text search on the web. Most search engines do their text query and retrieval using keywords. Unless the author of the web document specifies the keywords for their document (this is possible using metatags), it is up to the search engine to determine them. Essentially, this means that search engines pull out and index words that are believed to be significant. Words that are mentioned towards the top of a document and words that are repeated several times throughout the document are more likely to be deemed important.
Landing page
The page on which a user lands when he clicks on an ad. The better the landing page is designed, the higher the chance that the visitor performs a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form. A landing page is used to collect relevant data from those interested in the content featured on that page. Also known as a lead‐capture page. Often used for invitation‐only and special offer promotional programs that feature exclusive offers or discounts. A unique method to evaluate effectiveness of internet marketing programs.
Latency
Delay in transmitting or processing data, time required in a system for the transfer of data between two nodes.
Lead
Contact data of a potential customer. Lead generation serves to bring as many users to put their contact data in a registration form of a web page, to thereby generate a lot of contacts with potential customers.
Lifestyle
Way of living, in the broadest sense, of a society or segment of that society. Includes both work and leisure, eating, drinking, dress, patterns of behaviour and allocation of income.
Link
An electronic connection between two web sites (also called a ‘hot link’).
Log or log files
File that keeps track of network connections. These text files have the ability to record the number of search engine referrals that is being delivered to your website.
Login
The identification or name used to access – log into – a computer, network or site.
Logistics
Process of planning, implementing, and controlling the efficient and effective flow and storage of goods, services, and related information from point of origin to point of consumption for the purpose of conforming to customer requirements, internal and external movements, and return of materials for environmental purposes.
Mailing list
Online, a mailing list is an automatically distributed email message on a particular topic going to certain individuals. You can subscribe or unsubscribe to a mailing list by sending a message via email. There are many good professional mailing lists, and you should find the ones that concern your business.
Market
Economic system bringing together the forces of supply and demand for a particular good or service. A market consists of customers, suppliers, and channels of distribution, and mechanisms for establishing prices and effecting transactions where exchanges take place.
Market segmentation
Targeted market or audience for a given product is divided into categories (segments) based on geographic, demographic, or psychographic variables, such as demographic segmentation, geographic segmentation, and psychographic (behavioral) segmentation.
Market share
Percentage of sales volume captured by a brand, product, or firm in a given market.
Marketing
Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.
Marketing research
Process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting information (data): about a market, product, or service; about past, present and potential customers’ characteristics – such as pricing, spending habits, location, and needs – or about the industry as a whole and its competitors.
Mark‐up
Dollar amount added to the cost of products to get the selling price (can include incentives such as discounts and allowances), expressed as a percentage of the new selling price. Applies to each channel member.
Machine learning
With the help of automated analytical model building and data mining algorithms, computers ‘learn’ from data and find patterns and insights even in unknown data, without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning is used, for example, in medicine (automated diagnosis procedures), in text mining, and in autonomous systems (parking assistance in cars).
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Developed by A.H. Maslow, this is a framework of needs for understanding the development of society over time. The hierarchy can also be used to understand consumers’ needs from brands. The hierarchy is represented as a five‐tiered pyramid, with physiological needs (the basic needs for survival) at the base, progressing up through safety, belongingness, esteem and, finally, self‐actualisation.
Metadata
Data about data.
Needs
Basic forces that motivate a person to think about and do something/take action. In marketing, they help explain the benefit or satisfaction derived from a product or service, generally falling into the physical (air > water > food > sleep > sex > safety/security) or psychological (belonging > esteem > self‐actualisation > synergy) subsets of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Niche
Particular speciality in which a firm has garnered a large market share. Often, the market will be small enough so that the firm will not attract much competition. For example, a company that makes a line of specialty chemicals for exclusive use by the petroleum industry is said to have a niche in the chemical industry.
NULL
NULL entries are not zero values but can arise for a number of reasons, such as where the data item is not available or was lost in transit or was not filled in. It is big mistake to accidentally take these NULL values as meaning zero or not applicable or any other intentional value without thinking carefully about what they mean.
Null hypothesis
A proposal that is to be tested and which represents the baseline state, for example that gender does not affect affinity to buy.
Official statistics
For example ONS or Eurostat. Data are aggregated to conserve confidentiality. Level of granulation has to be such that individuals cannot be identified by triangulating knowledge from several sources.
OLAP
On‐line analytical processing, which is a convenient and fast way to look at business‐related results or to monitor KPIs. Similar words are management information systems (MIS) and decision support systems (DSS).
Open data
Sharing data gathered with the benefit of public funding, including most official statistics, academic research and some market, product and service evaluation data.
Opt‐in/opt out
A process in permission marketing, that gives consumers an opportunity to ‘opt in’ (taking action to be part of the promotion) or to ‘opt out’ (taking action to not be part of the promotion). In addition to the express consent, it should also be ensured that the user is actually the owner of the e‐mail address (see double opt‐in). Marketers can be sensitive about the distinction, although many are secretly anxious about the day when email, like real‐world direct mail, becomes an opt‐out medium.
Outlier
Outliers are unusual values that show up as very different to other values in the dataset.
Panel
A group of consumers who will be interviewed for market research purposes.
Personal data
Data related to a living individual who can be identified from the information; includes any expression of opinion about the individual.
Population
All the customers or cases for which the analysis is relevant. In some situations, the population from which the learning sample is taken may necessarily differ from the population that the analysis is intended for because of changes in environment, circumstances, and so on.
Precision
A measurement of the match (degree of uncertainty) between predictions and real values.
Prediction
Use of statistical models (learned on existing data) to make assumptions about future behaviour, preferences and affinity. Prediction modelling is a main part of data mining.
Predictive analytics
This form of analytics uses statistical functions in one or more data sets to predict trends or future events. It is the area of data mining concerned with forecasting probabilities and trends.
Predictive modelling
A process used in predictive analytics. Data, statistical and mathematical methods are combined. Rules, patterns and relationships, learned by analysing data of the past, are transformed into a model. A predictive model is thus an abstract representation of reality. It requires input variables and determines the output variable(s) for the prediction. Sometimes predictive modelling is seen as a part of data mining, sometimes as an independent discipline.
Probability
The chance of something happening.
Product
Whatever the customer thinks, feels, or expects from an item or idea. From a ‘marketing‐oriented’ perspective, products should be defined by what they satisfy, contribute, or deliver versus what they do or the form utility involved in their development. Example: a dishwasher cleans dishes but it is what the consumer does with the time savings that matters most. And ultimately, a dishwasher is about ‘clean dishes’, not the acting of cleaning them.
Product development
Creation of products with new or different characteristics than those already offered. This may involve modification of an existing product or formulation of an entirely new product that satisfies a newly‐defined set of customer wants or desires.
Product mix
All of the products or product lines offered by a firm. Some companies have a wide product mix geared toward a diverse consumer group. A product mix is also one of the four Ps or the marketing strategy. It includes the product idea (features, accessories, installation, warranty, and product lines), packaging, and labelling.
Product placement
The ‘appearance’ of a product or service within a television or radio program or a film. (for example, car, coffee, or fashion brands).
Profit
What remains after all costs (direct and indirect) have been covered from the initial selling price.
Prospects
People who are likely to become users or customers.
Prosumer
A word invented by futurologist Alvin Toffler to describe those who create goods, services or experiences for their own use or satisfaction, rather than for sale or exchange. The word prosumer is formed by contracting and combining the words producer and consumer.
Protocol
A set of rules that governs how information is to be exchanged between computer systems. Also used in certain structured chat rooms to refer to the order in which people may speak.
QR codes (quick response)
Digital graphic links found in magazine ads, webpages, billboards, and practically anywhere a marketer wishes to advertise a business. Read by cell phones and other digital devices with cameras to display additional information or promotional offers to potential customers.
Query
A request for information, usually to a search engine. A key word or phrase that instructs the search engine to find documents related to the user’s request.
Real time
Events that happen in real time are happening virtually at that particular moment. When you chat in a chat room or send an instant message, you are interacting in real time, since it is immediate.
Real‐time analytics
Allows immediate interaction with operational processes such as customer interactions, production, logistics, giving companies full ‘online’ control. ‘Real time’ refers to either low‐latency access to already stored data or to the processing and querying of data streams with zero latency.
Resource
Economic or productive factors required to accomplish an activity, such as materials, components, land, and capital. Others include energy, entrepreneurship, information, human skills/management expertise.
Return on investment (ROI)
The value that an organisation derives from investing in a project. Return on investment = (Revenue − Cost)/Cost, expressed as a percentage. A term describing the calculation of the financial return on an internet marketing or advertising initiative that incurs some cost. Determining ROI and the actual ROI in internet marketing and advertising has been much more accurate than in television, radio, and traditional media.
Revenue
Amounts generated from sale of goods or services, or any other use of capital or assets before any costs or expenses are deducted. Also called sales.
RFM
A tool used to identify best and worst customers by measuring three quantitative factors: recency (how recently a customer has made a purchase), frequency (how often a customer makes a purchase) and monetary value (how much money a customer spends on purchases). RFM is widely used to split customers into different segments. It is an easy tool to predict who will buy next and thus supports marketing decision making.
Risk
Uncertainty of falling short of goals in a marketing plan. It is also all the unknowns that are uncontrollable by the marketer. That is why researching the needs of the target market is imperative in reducing risk.
Robot
Bot, web crawler, spider. Software programs created to scan the web, for example finding key words, indexing web pages (search engines), updating content, gathering specific data (web scraping) and so on.
Sample
A sample is a statistically representative subset often used as a proxy for an entire population.
Sampling
Process of selecting a suitable sample. There are different methods of sampling including stratified and cluster sampling.
Scorecard
Traditionally a scorecard is a rule‐based method to split subjects into different segments. In marketing, a scorecard is sometimes used as an equivalent name for a predictive model.
Secondary data
Facts and figures already recorded prior to a project. There may be a higher degree of risk due to the length of time that has passed since the data were collected.
Segmentation
Clusters of people with similar needs that share other geographic, demographic, and psychographic characteristics, such as veterans, senior citizens, or teens.
Session
A series of transactions or hits made by a single user. If there has been no activity for a period of time, followed by the resumption of activity by the same user, a new session is considered started. Thirty minutes is the most common time period used to measure a session length.
Significance
An important result; statistical significance means that the probability of being wrong is small. Typical levels of significance are 1%, 5%, 10%.
Smart home
Intelligent household. Umbrella term for technical processes and systems in residential rooms and buildings focusing on an increase in living, living quality, safety, and efficient use of energy on the basis of networked and remote controllable devices and installations, and automated processes. Everyday use of smart gadgets like electricity smart meters, voice‐controlled security, lighting and heating, and so on.
SME (small to medium enterprise)
Usually defined as organisations with fewer than 250 employees, with medium businesses having 50 to 249 employees and small businesses having up to 49 employees. Small businesses include microbusinesses, which can be separately defined as having up to five employees.
SQL
Standard query language – a programming language to deal with databases.
Stakeholder
An individual, organisation or community that has an interest in the strategy and operation of an organisation. Stakeholders may include shareholders, employees, customers, government, local communities, opinion formers, suppliers and partners.
Supervised learning
Model building when there is a target, and information is available, that can be used to predict the target. The temporal considerations of the variables are extremely important.
Supply chain
The network of suppliers, manufacturers and distributors involved in the production and delivery of a product.
Supply chain management
Management activities to maximise customer value by ensuring the most effective and efficient commercialisation schedule (also see commercialisation).
Surfing
Exploring the World Wide Web. Commonly seen as ‘surfing the net’.
Target market
Group of persons for which a firm creates and maintains a product mix that specifically fits the needs and preferences of that group. For example, the furniture market can be divided into segments described as Early American, contemporary, or traditional.
Targeting
Precise delimination and addressing of target groups. Before creating an advertising campaign, the target group is determined by analysis/segmentation so that it can be addressed precisely and with relevant content.
Testing (statistical)
Using evidence to assess the truth of a hypothesis.
Text mining
Extract high‐quality information from texts by identifying patterns and trends with statistical methods.
Tracking
The survey and evaluation of, for example, surfing behaviour on the internet. When tracking, website operators determine which links were clicked on their website or how long users stay on a particular page. With tracking data, it is possible to dynamically adapt the contents of a website to the users to keep them on a web offer for a longer time, to make them click on ads, or to minimise abort rates during online shopping.
Traffic
Expresses the demand for an online offer and is generally measured by the number of visitors to a website. The goal of every web page operator and advertiser is to attract as much traffic as possible to its online offer. The increase in user numbers is referred to as traffic building. Some companies measure search generated traffic separately by recording referrals from known search engines and directories.
Transformations
Change in form, function, condition or outward appearance of a product, service or data item. For example, a plastics company may take polymer pellets, melt and pour them into moulds to make a child’s toy; similarly, raw salary data that have a skew distribution are transformed by taking logs into a more symmetrical approximately normal distribution.
Type 1 error
Probability of rejecting the null hypothesis when it is true; for example, a court of law finds a person guilty when they are really innocent.
Type 2 error
Probability of accepting the null hypothesis when it is false; for example, a court of law finds a person innocent when they are really guilty.
Unique selling point (USP)
The benefit that a product or service can deliver to customers that is not offered by any competitor: one of the fundamentals of effective marketing and business. USP is sometimes referred to as ‘unique selling proposition’.
Unique selling proposition (USP)
The benefit that a product or service can deliver to customers that is not offered by any competitor: one of the fundamentals of effective marketing and business. USP is sometimes referred to as ‘unique selling point’.
Unsupervised learning
Model building when there is no target but information is available that can describe the situation.
URL (uniform resource locator)
Internet service provider address of a document or website, usually a protocol consisting of a name(s). Also expressed as a series of numbers.
Utility
Ability of the product to satisfy customers’ needs and wants. The four major marketing utilities include form utility, time utility, place utility, and possession utility. More recent studies include psychological utility (also see customer satisfaction).
Validity
In research studies, the data collected reflects what it was designed to measure. Often, invalid data also contains bias.
Wearables
Computer technologies that people can carry on the body/head, and a part of the Internet of things. It is also called ‘wearable technology’ or ‘wearable computer’. Wearables usually support activities in the real world, through (additional) information, evaluations and instructions.
Web analytics
Research, evaluation, description and interpretation of online activities and interactions with the aim of optimising online and direct marketing. Examples: targeting, tracking, campaign and keyword optimisation.
Web site
The virtual location for an organisation’s presence on the World Wide Web, usually making up several web pages and a single home page designated by a unique URL.
Web traffic
Number of hits or unique visitors that a website receives. This traffic results from marketers’ efforts to drive more people (potential customers) to their sites.