Which of the following statements about buying centers is true

Gable Brothers Inc. is trying to find a viable market for its new fountain pen. After conducting a psychographic segmentation, it found that the segment of potential consumers is so small that the volume in sales would not be profitable for the company. Therefore, top management has decided to not release the product into the market. In the context of the stages of the market segmentation process, the company is currently:

dividing markets on relevant dimensions.

delineating the firm's current situation.

determining consumer needs and wants.

deciding the market segmentation strategy.

An organization's routine purchase changes when a supplier discontinues a product. In such a situation, which purchasing approach would the organizational buyer be most likely to use?

New task rebuy

Straight task buy

Straight rebuy

Modified rebuy

In the context of channels of distribution, ________ are used in organizational markets in cases where manufacturers do not wish to have their own sales forces.

jobbers

facilitators

agents

distributors

Which of the following best describes a strategic alliance?

It is an alliance with experts outside an organization who are called in to help the organization generate new product ideas.

It is a long-term partnership between two organizations designed to accomplish the strategic goals of both parties.

It is a team consisting of members from different functional areas of an organization that work together to solve a strategic issue.

It is a collaboration of two different departments within an organization to implement the organization's strategic plan.

Which of the following types of discounts is offered to channel members for purchasing and marketing a large number of units?

Loyalty discounts

Slotting allowances

Promotional allowances

Quantity discounts

Which of the following statements best describes primary data?

Data collected through government reports or syndicated data providers

Data collected by an organization specifically for the research problem under investigation

Data provided by the government, such as U.S. census data

Data that have previously been collected for other purposes but can be used for the problem at hand

In which of the following stages of the new product development process is the new product proposal evaluated and responsibility for a project assigned to a project team?

Test marketing

Project planning

Idea screening

Product development

MNM Foods Inc. manufactures jellies that are made out of gelatin in various fruit flavors. However, its sales dipped significantly in the last quarter. Research reveals that a significant amount of health benefits can be associated with the consumption of jellies. MNM Foods incorporates new promotion strategies to project the newly discovered health benefits. This is an example of:

improvements and revisions of existing products.

additions to existing product lines.

new-to-the-firm products.

product repositionings.

In terms of uniformity, which of the following is a difference between services and goods?

Owing to customer non-participation, services are often linear, while goods are non-linear.

Because of high involvement on the part of a buyer, services tend to be unique, with the quality likely to vary, while the quality and variance from standards of goods can be corrected before purchase.

Services often involve a short-term, impersonal relationship between buyer and seller, while goods often involve a personal, long-term relationship.

Services can be inventoried uniformly, while goods face stockouts due to their heterogeneous nature.

Which of the following provides valuable information about what a target market thinks about a product and what it is worth to them?

Slotting preference

Price elasticity

Promotional discounting

Value substitution

A computer manufacturer markets its computers through a variety of methods—telemarketing, catalog selling, cable selling, and online selling—that do not involve the use of intermediaries. Which of the following channels or types of marketing is the manufacturer using?

Intermediary marketing

Administered marketing

Horizontal channel

Direct channel

Sunset Hotels provides soft skills training to its employees by imparting lessons on basic communication skills, housekeeping techniques, body language, and basic standards of dressing. In this case, on which of the following critical components of internal marketing is Sunset Hotels focusing?

Careful selection process in hiring employees

Significant modeling by managers

Emphasis on teaching employees to have good attitudes

Energetic follow-through process

In odd-even pricing, ________.

prices are set a few dollars or a few cents below a round number to encourage customers to think of the products as less expensive

prices are set exclusively on the cost of the product and historical prices

a high price is charged to create a signal that the product is exceptionally fine

several products are sold together at a single price to connote value and convenience for customers

________ can be defined as the desire to become everything one is capable of becoming.

Self-actualization needs

Physiological needs

Esteem needs

Belongingness and love needs

________ are products that extend current product lines to current markets.

Additions to existing product lines

Improvements and revisions of existing products

New-to-the-world products

New-to-the-firm products

Which of the following is most likely to be a reason for a firm to price a product above competition?

The demand for the firm's product is price elastic.

The firm is selling a homogeneous product.

The firm's product is inferior in comparison to its counterparts.

The firm is a price leader in the industry.

Shannon Cruz is very particular about the kind of blue jeans she wears. She refuses to buy anything other than Reeve's 201 and is very keen about finding that particular fit since her local store does not have it. In this scenario, Reeve's 201 is an example of a(n) ________.

intangible good

convenience good

specialty good

intermediate good

Stacy, a marketing manager at a beverage manufacturing firm, conducts a customer survey to determine the reason for a dip in the sales of Zeal, a cola, in the last quarter. The survey reveals that there is an immediate customer demand requiring the use of organic ingredients to Zeal. The firm decides to enhance Zeal with the introduction of organic ingredients. This new product would fall into the category of ________.

new-to-the-world products

new-to-the-firm products

improvements and revisions of existing products

additions to existing product lines

Leo Music Café regularly holds concerts that feature upcoming as well as well-acclaimed artists. The café is a big hub for music lovers. However, the café lacks the facility of online booking and only allows bookings at the venue. The manager of the café is reluctant to adopt the latest technology. This implies that the management at Leo Music Café has:

a limited view of marketing.

adopted vertical integration.

no obsolescence.

no sense of creativity.

Paula sells a scanner that converts large documents to an electronic format for editing and printing items up to six feet long and four feet wide. She secures an appointment with the marketing manager of a large department store chain that had been identified by her sales force as a prospect. Her plan is to demonstrate the product's unique features. However, as soon as the meeting starts, the manager says, "I am the regional head for all the buying that this chain does. What made you attempt your sales pitch with me? You should have met one of my subordinates first." Based on which of the following questions of the qualifying process is Paula likely to deem the manager as a lead, not a true prospect?

Is the lead eligible to buy?

Does the lead have the ability to pay?

Does the lead have a want or need that can be satisfied by the purchase of Paula's products or services?

Can the lead be approached favorably?

In the context of channels of distribution, ________ are used in organizational markets when there is a large number of buyers but each purchases a small amount of a product.

retailers

agents

wholesalers

distributors

The major goal of most test marketing is to:

identify the location for a new store.

evaluate store layouts of a new store.

estimate the future sales potential of new products.

establish the placement of new products.

Which of the following statements regarding the strategic goals of marketing communications is most accurate?

Marketing communications designed to create awareness are especially important for existing products rather than new products.

Unlike producers, retail stores and other organizations do not use communications to build positive images.

An important goal of marketing communications is to build a relationship with the organization's channel members.

It costs far more to retain an existing customer than to attract a new customer.

TradeEx Incorporation, which deals with financial services, employs individuals and trains them intensively for a month. The training sessions include enhancing their knowledge of various financial services in the market, the changing trends of the stock market, and the fast-moving business environment. The employees are also trained on how to reach their sales targets. These steps taken by the firm in training new employees imply that the firm focuses on:

teaching employees to have good attitudes.

significant modeling by managers.

a careful selection process in hiring employees.

an energetic follow-through process.

The favorable trade policy of Creasio enables the nation's firms to engage in extensive foreign trade. The lack of trade barriers enables foreign companies to invest directly in the local market. The maintenance of a proper balance between the exports and the imports of the nation has led to a positive balance of trade. As a result, the global operations of firms in Creasio are strong. The favorable trade policy relates to which of the following external factors?

Economic factors

Environmental factors

Competitive factors

Market factors

Which of the following statements is true of the organizational buyer category of producers?

Producers constitute the smallest segment of organizational buyers.

The primary function of producers is to purchase products from manufacturers and distribute them to consumers and other organizational buyers.

Producers of goods tend to be larger and more geographically concentrated than producers of services.

Producers are the only class of buyers that is excluded from the purview of business-to-business marketing.

The distribution channel for a producer that manufactures industrial cleaning products comprises the primary manufacturer, the marketing intermediary, and the end user. The manufacturer seeks to provide support to his sales force by providing training and product application assistance to prospective buyers. To do so, which of the following groups is the manufacturer most likely to approach?

Missionary agents

Technical sales specialists

Spotters

Horizontal sales teams

The administrative department of Newell Inc. has been routinely purchasing stationery and miscellaneous office supplies from its supplier, Accent Services, for eight years. In order to save time, the company has an automated computer system that automatically reorders certain commonly used supplies as and when they are depleted. This organizational buying of Newell Inc. typically exemplifies a ________.

modified rebuy

straight rebuy

new task purchase

modified purchase

Which of the following is a sales forecasting method that obtains the combined views of the sales force about the future outlook for sales?

Sales force executive opinion method

Sales force time-series analysis

Sales force correlation analysis

Sales force composite method

Heidi, the marketing manager of a cosmetics manufacturing company, decides to fix the price of a new perfume at $89.99. She believes that the odd pricing of the product will encourage potential buyers to think of the product as less expensive. Which of the following factors has Heidi considered when making her pricing decision?

Psychological factors

Economic factors

Demographic factors

Environmental factors

Under a single policy, Reassurance Inc., an insurance company, provides insurance coverage for healthcare, accident, and property to independent corporations. By doing this, Reassurance Inc. aims to:

encourage customers to view it as an upholder of high quality.

create a signal that its service is exceptionally fine.

increase sales through steep price discounting.

connote value and convenience for its customers.

Fresh-Cola Inc. is a manufacturer of carbonated drinks that packages its products in bottles, cans, and 12-pack cartons. A standard 12-pack carton of these drinks can neither fit conveniently in the standard-size refrigerator shelf nor can the drinks be easily dispensed from the carton. Fresh-Cola introduces a new design called "the refrigerator pack." The refrigerator pack is designed to fit easily on a standard refrigerator shelf and dispenses one can at a time. With its new refrigerator pack, Fresh-Cola:

has failed to consider its consumers' needs in making its packaging decisions.

is using packaging as a part of its product differentiation strategy.

is using a brand extension strategy for market development.

is implementing a cost leadership strategy in the market for carbonated drinks.

Rita is a successful entrepreneur who owns a small coffee shop and serves her customers regular homemade coffee. She recently experimented with a new flavor and distributed free samples to her regular customers. She then sought their feedback on the new flavor. This is an example of ________.

brand retailing

test marketing

brand positioning

commercialization

Which of the following adoptive categories involved in the diffusion of innovation is the most reluctant to make changes and is comfortable with traditional products?

Early adopters

Laggards

Early majority

Innovators

Matrixautos, an automobile rental unit, rents its cars at $499 rather than $500 to encourage its consumers to think of its services as less expensive. This is an example of ________.

markup pricing

prestige pricing

odd-even pricing

bundle pricing

Helene works in the HR department of Seven Hills Diagnostic Centre. The administration department has informed Helene that many of the new nurses and attendants who have joined often leave before their shift ends by having someone forge their signature on the attendance sheets. When Helene confronted some of these nurses, they grew defensive and accused Helene of making baseless claims. Helene is now considering having a fingerprint recognition device installed to record employee attendance. Helene is currently in the ________ stage of the organizational buying process.

organizational need

vendor analysis

purchase activity

postpurchase evaluation

In a ________, one person is responsible for overseeing an entire product line with all of the functional areas of marketing such as research, advertising, sales promotion, sales, and product planning.

brand-manager system

functional departments system

marketing-manager system

product-management system

Which of the following is a psychological factor affecting pricing decisions?

The likelihood of potential buyers using price as an indicator of quality

The economic strength of potential buyers

The expected consumption rates of potential buyers

The location of potential buyers

________ is a method of differentiating a relatively homogeneous product.

Family branding

Product line extension

Mass marketing

Distinctive packaging

Which of the following is a secondary data source for sales lead generation?

Directories

Seminars

Catalogs

Spotters

When using a cost leadership strategy, a firm is most likely to offer:

a highly differentiated product.

a prestige product.

a standard, no-frills product.

an expensive product of superior design and quality.

Which of the following statements is an advantage of using magazines as an advertising medium?

It provides selective reader exposure.

It has the potential of segmentation.

It has a short lead time for ad placement.

It is location specific.

For a marketing manager, social classes offer some insights into consumer behavior that are potentially useful:

as a market segmentation variable.

for developing the mission statement.

to form buying centers within his company.

for changing their structure.

________ is the first stage in the sales relationship-building process.

Presentation

Planning a sales call

Prospecting

Obtaining commitment

Which of the following statements best pertains to model base management software required by marketing information systems?

The software produces information to address decision-making needs.

The software contains routines for manipulating data.

The software permits marketers to categorize and sort databases.

The software helps in retrieving data from internal and external sources.

Venus Inc., a producer of high-end computer software, provides merchandising aids to its distributors in the form of interactive videos on the application of the software. It offers distribution allowances to resellers for putting up special counter displays of its exclusive range of products. It aims to accelerate the sales of its newly launched product through these measures. In this scenario, Venus Inc. is employing a ________.

profile marketing strategy

target marketing strategy

push marketing strategy

pull marketing strategy

Alice Inc., an American firm, signed a contract with an Indian retailer to sell its latest range of furniture. Due to wrong analysis about the buying power and preferences of the Indian population, the furniture was priced high, consequently leading to low sales. From this scenario, we can infer that Alice Inc. did not succeed due to the ________ existing in India.

cultural conditions

legal conditions

political conditions

economic conditions

________ refers to a service provider's efforts to understand a customer's needs and then to provide, as best as possible, individualized service delivery.

Assurance

Intangibility

Quality

Empathy

Consumer promotions on a product are primarily meant to:

increase a manufacturer's inventories and reduce a distributor's or retailer's inventories.

discourage customers to trade up.

encourage retailers to place more emphasis on selling a product.

induce customers to try a product.

Which of the following is a disadvantage of secondary data?

Secondary data sources are more limited than sources of primary data.

Secondary data are collected specifically for the research problem under investigation.

Secondary data are not always available for strategy-specific research questions.

Secondary data are more expensive to obtain and utilize than primary data.

In the context of general considerations in channel planning, which of the following is a competitor characteristic?

Past channel experience

Overall marketing strategy employed

Geographic dispersion

Marketing functions willing to perform

Which of the following elements of the promotional mix is most likely to encourage materialism and excessive consumption?

Cold calling

Telemarketing

Public relations

Advertising

According to the VALS™ framework, consumers driven by a desire for social or physical activity, variety, and risk taking are motivated primarily by ________.

self-expression

extrinsic rewards

ideals

achievements

Which of the following organizational growth strategies deals with present products in present markets?

Diversification

Market development

Market penetration

Product development

Which of the following statements regarding organizational goods is true?

Organizational goods are often purchased directly from the original source with few middlemen.

The primary purchasing motive for organizational goods is convenience, even if the costs are high.

Organizational goods are not purchased as means to an end but rather as an end in themselves.

Buyers of organizational goods are generally ill informed.

In the context of government regulations, which of the following is the primary device used to outlaw horizontal price fixing?

The Robinson-Patman Act

The Sherman Antitrust Act

The Taft-Hartley Act

The Clayton Act

In the context of entry and growth strategies for global marketing, which of the following is most likely true of strategic alliances?

Partners share long-term goals and pledge almost total cooperation.

The risk of competitive conflict between partners is decreased.

They are usually of a much shorter-term nature than are joint ventures.

Firms enter strategic alliances to decelerate technological diffusion.

Identify a true statement about qualitative research.

It includes inventory data that can indicate how rapidly various products are selling and expenditure data on such things as advertising, personal selling, or packaging.

It involves face-to-face interviews with respondents designed to develop a better understanding of what they think and feel concerning a research topic.

It involves systematic procedures designed to obtain and analyze numerical data.

It includes all of the factors that could influence the success of a strategy.

By investing solely in domestic operations or not being willing to adapt products to foreign markets, U.S. companies:

are likely to have diminished operating costs.

can maximize their potential to achieve economies of scale.

will find it easier to preempt competitors' global moves.

are more susceptible to foreign incursions.

Which of the following provides a quantitative standard against which the performance of individual sales representatives or other marketing units can be measured?

Sales strategies

Sales forecasts

Sales quotas

Sales calls

Aster Inc. has developed a new digital three-tier food steamer. Though the product comes with a self-explanatory manual, the controls and the operation of the appliance have to be explained to the customer on a one-to-one basis, in great detail. Which of the following elements of the promotional mix is Aster Inc. most likely to rely on to sell its products?

Sales promotion

Personal selling

Public relations

Advertising

________ segmentation refers to an approach that identifies specific households in a market by focusing on local neighborhood areas to create classifications of actual, addressable, mappable neighborhoods where consumers live and shop.

Social

Psychographic

Benefit

Geodemographic

What is the function of the North American Industry Classification System?

It provides information about the number of establishments, sales volume, and number of employees in each industry broken down by geographic area.

It measures industrial activity in 20 countries, providing insights into 37 marketplaces via interviews.

It provides consumer panel service for tracking retail purchases and motivations.

It collects store tracking data used with consumer panel data to track the influence of advertising on consumers of packaged goods.

During which stage of the research process does a market researcher decide whether primary or secondary data are needed for the research process?

Preparation of research report

Processing of research data

Plan of the research

Performance of the research

Which of the following is true about a sales forecast?

It is typically used by a marketing manager to budget selling expenses.

It might not be suitable for use in situations that involve personal selling efforts.

It is useful in predicting customer reactions to pre-launched products.

It is typically used to implement customers' comments into product development.