Marketing by Abbreviations

                                                                 Marketing by Abbreviations

I bought a book on marketing costing less than Rs. 300. I knew right then that it has to be a primer. The book, only about 200 pages at the most (I bought the Kindle version, no pages marked), happens to be a pre-primer. Yes, that is how simplistic (not just simple, but simplistic) the book is. 

I do have to mention why I bought the book in the first place. I do not have any book on any topic of management in my personal library, and I thought I would fill that lacuna with this one on marketing. In my reckoning, marketing is on the second rung from the bottom, HR being the lowest in management studies, finance being at the top. I wanted to start and climb up, if I desired. Fortunately, I would not waste any more money.

The book has far too many, for my taste, abbreviations. These would anchor my report on the book. In fact, beyond these abbreviations I may not have much to say about the book.

CMO – Chief Marketing Officer (of a company)

TL;DR – Too long; didn’t read

BBP – Brand Building Pentagon (I think the Pentagon in or in the neighbourhood of Washington DC needs no brand building!)

SPANCO – Suspect, Prospect, Analysis, Negotiation, Conclusion and Order

B2B – Business-to-business (I am, and so would you be, know this; yet as the author condescended to expand it for us, I am including it in this list)

As an aside, I would like to count the number of readers of my posts who know what A2B is? It stands for Adyar Ananda Bhavan, a big thing in Chennai and Tamil Nadu.

Getting back to the list,

B2C – Business-to customers/consumers

CTO – Chief Technology Officer

MHI – Monthly household income

SEC – Socio-economic classification

CWE – Chief wage earner

OBC – Organisational buying centre

CEO – Chief Executive Officer (I added the full form, not given in the book)

CDJ – Customer decision journey

CMIE – Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy

NFHS – National Family Health Survey

SIAM – Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (This should have been given, but was not)

Gen AI – Generative artificial Intelligence

FGD – Focus group discussion

MFG – (digital) mini-focus group

DI – Depth interview

ECG – Extended creativity group

U&A – Usage and attitude study

TOM – Top-of-mind (awareness)

UA – Unaided awareness

AA – Aided awareness

CU – Current usage

EU – Ever usage

ZMOT – Zero Moment of Truth

NPS – Net promoter scores

C-sat – Consumer satisfaction (surveys)

Then, there are the numbered letters, like

The four Ps – price, product, place and promotion (let us see how many times you need to repeat the four Ps before you can recall them at a snap!) 

The above is from Chapter 1 only. I have gone through the whole book, the rest three chapters. The standard is no better and the abbreviations are not any scarcer. Please believe me. If this forms a part of orientation towards management, I say, May God Bless Ye and scoot away in a trice!

Raghuram Ekambaram