A glossary of brand terms.
Brand Terms
Mainstream Brand:

Any contemporary brand that is well known and generally accepted to be a popular choice.

See: Premium Brand, Ultra Premium Brand, Ultra Value Brand, Value Brand

Market Equity:

Consumer Equity

Market Leader:

A brand or company that has achieved the dominant position in the market, either in scale or influence.

Market Segmentation:

Division of consumers into subgroups who, based on shared attributes, are expected to respond to an offering in much the same way.

See: Demographics, Psychographics, Ethnographics

Market Share:

Percentage of sales in a given category in a given market, in terms of dollars or units sold. This can be expressed either in terms of volume (how many units sold) or value (the worth of units sold).


Marketing is the process of planning and executing the pricing, promotion, and distribution of an offering, to create and maintain consumer relationships.


A person, animal, or object used as a symbol to represent an organization. (e.g., United States Marine Corps' bulldog)

Mass Marketing:

A marketing philosophy in which the seller views the market as a homogeneous whole, hence, trying to be all things to all consumers. Also referred to as unsegmented marketing or undifferentiated marketing.


The available resources that may be used as the "way" to achieve the ends.

See: Ends, Ways


MEME: A fundamental unit of information. An idea, belief, belief system, or pattern of behavior that spreads throughout a culture: vertically by cultural inheritance (parent to child), horizontally by cultural acquisition (peer groups or media). The term was coined by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene (1976).


The percentage of time a consumer thinks about a particular brand within the context of the brand's application. (e.g., When I think of the beach, Coppertone comes to mind.)

Mistaken Completeness:

Believing that one has a larger portion of the available information about a subject than they actually have. This leads to the extrapolation of what they believe is a comprehensive understanding of that subject.

Mitigated Speech:

A linguistic term describing the deferential in communication based on the imbalance of authority between individuals. The subordinate downplays the urgency/importance of a situation or request. As a result, the superior makes false assumptions about the situation at hand.

Monadic Testing:

Product testing where the respondent is only given one product to test, rather than comparing two or more.

Monolithic Brand:

This type of Brand Architecture uses the company name to "masterbrand" all of its product/service offerings. (e.g., GE is a Monolithic Brand—GE lighting, GE capital, GE medical…)




A market in which goods or services are offered by several sellers, but there is only one buyer.


Any activity that does not add value.

See: Kaikaku, Kaisen

Multi-Brand Strategy:
