R and D - abbrev. Research and Development.
Rack-Jobber - a specialised form of merchant wholesaler supplying non-general
lines to supermarkets, pharmacies, hardware stores, etc.
Rational Appeals in Advertising - advertising messages, usually product-feature
based, in which advertisers attempt to achieve their objectives by appeals
to logic and reason rather than to the emotions. See Emotional Appeals
in Advertising.
Rational Buying Motives - reasons for buying that are based on logic
or judgement rather than on emotion.
Raw Materials - a classification of industrial goods that are basic
materials which become part of a physical product in the manufacturing
process.
RDC - abbrev. Regional Distribution Centre.
Reach - the percentage of the target audience which will be exposed
to at least one advertisement during the specified period of the campaign.
Reactive Marketing Control Systems - evaluation and control systems
in which management finds that marketing performance is not satisfactory
and takes corrective action; after-the-fact and steering control are reactive
systems. See Proactive Marketing Control Systems; Adaptive Control System;
After-the-Fact Control System; Steering Control System.
Reactive Marketing Strategies - marketing activities forced upon an
organisation by competitive action; defensive strategies. See Proactive
Marketing Strategies.
Real Positioning - the modification of a product offering so that it
delivers more satisfactorily the benefits that buyers of this kind of product
desire. See Market Positioning; Repositioning.
Rebate - a temporary price reduction to encourage immediate purchase.
Recall - see Product Recall.
Recall Tests - a means of evaluating the effectiveness of a company's
recent advertising by asking respondents to bring to mind advertisements
they have read, heard or viewed. See Aided Recall; Unaided Recall.
Receiver - the target of a message in the communication process.
Recession
Reciprocity - a practice, which may be illegal under the Trade Practices
Act, in which a firm gives purchasing preference to a firm to which it
sells. See Reverse Reciprocity.
Recognition Tests - a means of evaluating the effectiveness of a firm's
recent advertising; respondents are shown an advertisement, asked if they
have seen it before, and, if so, are quizzed on its contents.
Recruiting - see Sales Personnel Recruitment.
Recycling - the collection and processing of used materials for reuse.
Redemption - the conversion of a sales promotion coupon to a purchase.
Redemption Rate - the number of sales promotion coupons converted to
purchases expressed as a percentage of the number distributed.
Reduced Price Pack - a type of consumer sales promotion in which two
or more units of the same product are banded together and sold at a lower
price.
Reference Groups - all of those whose influence plays some part in
the buying behaviour of consumers. See Aspirational Reference Group; Contactual
Reference Group.
Referral Selling - selling to customers whose names have been suggested
by previous satisfied customers.
Reflective Probes - neutral statements of the salesperson reaffirming
or repeating a customer's comment in order to stimulate the customer to
provide more information.
Regional Brands - manufacturers' brands sold only in certain regions.
Regional Shopping Centre - a major retail shopping complex serving
a distinct geographic area of a city or state, housing at least one major
full-line department store and a number of other retailers and service
providers.
Registered Design - a form of legal protection against the copying
by a competitor of the external appearance of a product.
Regressive Commission - a sales commission system in which the rate
of commission paid decreases with the quantity of goods sold. See Progressive
Commission.
Regulatory Environment - that part of the firm's external marketing
environment on which legal and political forces act to change regulations
which affect the marketing effort; regulation changes can pose threats
or present opportunities.
Reinforcement - the reward or punishment delivered by a particular
response to a stimulus.
Reinforcement Advertising - advertising intended to reassure purchasers,
to tell them that they have done the right thing in buying the particular
product and to explain how to get the best results and most stisfaction
from its use; the purpose of reinfrcement advertising is to maintain market
share.
Reinforcement Advertising - advertising to reassure the buyer that the
right product has been purchased.
Relationship Selling - selling in which the primary objective is the
building of long-term relationships with customers from which repeat business
will flow.
Relative Advantage - the degree to which a new product is superior to
an existing one; a major determinant of the rate of adoption of a new product.
See Adoption Rate Determinants.
Relative Market Share - the size of a company's share of the market
compared to that of competitors.
Reliability - the accuracy with which data in a marketing research
study has been collected; a reliable marketing research study should produce
similar results if repeated.
Remarketing - marketing activity intended to encourage renewed use of
a product in which market interest has declined.
Reminder Advertising - advertising aimed at reminding a target market
that a product is available as opposed to informing or persuading it; typically
associated with products in the mature stage of their life cycle. Also
referred to as Retentive Advertising. See Advertising Objectives.
Reorder Frequency - see Economic Order Quantity.
Reorder Level - see Economic Order Quantity.
Repositioning - arranging for a product or brand to occupy some other
clear and distinctive position in the market and in the minds of target
consumers than that which it presently occupies; repositioning may be necessary
or desirable if sales expectations are not being met, or to allow for the
introduction to the market of a new product or brand, or similar. See
Market Positioning.
Representative - see Sales Representative.
Representativeness - the degree to which a sample of consumers in a
marketing research study represents the characteristics of the population
as a whole.
Resale Price Manintenance - a practice, now illegal in Australia, in
which the manufacturer fixes the price at which a buyer may resell the
product.
Research Design - the controlling plan for a marketing research study
in which the methods and procedures for collecting and analysing the information
to be collected is specified.
Research Objectives - see Marketing Research Objectives.
Researcher-Controlled Sampling - a form of nonprobability sampling
in which the researcher selects the respondents in a marketing research
study. It may result in researcher bias.
Reseller - a middleman; one who buys merchandise to resell it at a
profit.
Reseller Market - the market consisting of wholesalers and retailers
who buy products for resale purposes.
Response Bias - the inclination of respondents in a marketing research
survey to give the answer that they believe the interviewer wants to hear.
Response Elasticity - a measure of the degree to which individuals
or groups respond to a marketing program.
Response Selling - a elementary form of selling, common in retailing,
in which the salesperson simply responds to the customer's demands; little
creativity or persuasion is used.
Response Time - the time taken by a firm to answer a customer inquiry
about the status of an order.
Responsiveness - the degree to which people control their emotions when
relating to others; used in selling as an indicator of social style. See
Social Styles; Amiable; Analytical; Driver; Expressive.
Restraint of Trade - any action which damages in some way another's
opportunity to carry on a business.
Retail Advertising - advertising by retailers direct to consumers.
Retail Buyer - an individual employed by a retailer primarily to buy
merchandise for resale through the store.
Retail Image - the perception that consumers have of a particular store
and of the experience of shopping there.
Retail Mix - the mix of variables, including location, merchandise,
communications, price, services, physical attributes and personnel, which
form the overall strategic marketing components of retailing.
Retailers - members of the distribution channel who sell directly to
the consumer.
Retailer Cooperative - a wholesaling operation established by a group
of retailers to give themselves a buying advantage.
Retailing - the activity of selling to buyers who are buying for their
own ultimate consumption.
Retentive Advertising - see Reminder Advertising.
Return on Assets Managed - a measure of a firm's profitability; after-tax
profit expressed as a percentage of assets used to make it.
Return on Equity - a measure of a firm's profitability; profit achieved
in a given period is expressed as a percentage of the total amount invested
in the firm by its owners.
Return on Investment - a measure of a firm's profitability in which
profits are expressed as a percentage of investment.
Reusable Container - a type of consumer sales promotion in which potential
customers are encouraged to buy a particular product because it is packaged
in a container that can be used for some other useful purpose when empty.
Reverse Marketing Channel - a marketing channel in which goods (to be
recycled or reprocessed) flow backward from consumer to intermediaries
to producer; also called a Backward Marketing Channel..
Reverse Reciprocity - a practice in which a firm gives supply preference
to another from which it buys.
Risk - the chance a purchaser takes that the product will not function
as expected or satisfy the felt want. See Emotional Risk; Financial Risk;
Performance Risk; Physical Risk; Social Risk.
Risk Avoidance - measures including acquiring information, seeking
reassurance from family and friends, obtaining advice from experts, etc.
taken by purchasers to reduce the level of anxiety they experience when
buying.
ROAM - abbrev. Return on Assets Managed.
ROI - abbrev. Return on Investment.
Role Playing - an exercise commonly used in sales training in which
one person acts the part of a salesperson and another a buyer to practise
selling skills.
Rollout - the launch of a new product on a region by region basis as
opposed to a national introduction; the rollout is intended to minimise
the risk and to reduce the investment in production and marketing. See
National Introduction; New Product Development.
Route Salesforce - a sales team consisting of salespeople who call
on existing customers to take orders for the company's products; the route
sales force does not sell in the traditional sense, but merely inspects
a retailer's shelves and restocks them as required.
Routine Rebuy - see Straight Rebuy.
Routine Response Behaviour - a buying situation in which the buyer has
had considerable past experience; also called Automatic Response Behaviour
or Habitual Response Behaviour. See Extensive Problem Solving; Limited
Problem Solving.
Routing - the planning of the best route to be followed by a sales
representative in making a series of sales calls; good routing raises both
the number of calls the representative is able to make and the ratio of
selling time to non-selling time.
RPM - abbrev. Resale Price Maintenance.
Run-Out Strategy - a strategic decision to allow a product in the decline
stage of its life-cycle to continue to be sold, especially if the product
has a sizable hard-core market which insists on buying it; often, the marketer
may raise the price a little to obtain a slight premium price while paring
all promotional costs. See Decline Stage; Product Lifecycle.
