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In accounting and economics, 'fixed costs', also known as indirect costs or overhead costs, are business expenses that are not dependent on the level of goods or services produced by the business. They tend to be recurring, such as interest or rents being paid per month. These costs also tend to be capital costs. This is in contrast to variable costs, which are volume-related and unknown at the beginning of the accounting year. Fixed costs have an effect on the nature of certain variable costs.
Variable costs are costs that change as the quantity of the good or service that a business produces changes. Variable costs are the sum of marginal costs over all units produced. They can also be considered normal costs. Fixed costs and variable costs make up the two components of total cost. Direct costs are costs that can easily be associated with a particular cost object. However, not all variable costs are direct costs. For example, variable manufacturing overhead costs are variable costs that are indirect costs, not direct costs. Variable costs are sometimes called unit-level costs as they vary with the number of units produced.
In business and accounting, net income is an entity's income minus cost of goods sold, expenses, depreciation and amortization, interest, and taxes for an accounting period.
In business, operating margin—also known as operating income margin, operating profit margin, EBIT margin and return on sales (ROS)—is the ratio of operating income to net sales, usually expressed in percent.
Gross margin is the difference between revenue and cost of goods sold (COGS), divided by revenue. Gross margin is expressed as a percentage. Generally, it is calculated as the selling price of an item, less the cost of goods sold, then divided by the same selling price. "Gross margin" is often used interchangeably with "gross profit", however the terms are different: "gross profit" is technically an absolute monetary amount and "gross margin" is technically a percentage or ratio.
Contribution margin (CM), or dollar contribution per unit, is the selling price per unit minus the variable cost per unit. "Contribution" represents the portion of sales revenue that is not consumed by variable costs and so contributes to the coverage of fixed costs. This concept is one of the key building blocks of break-even analysis.
In economics, total cost (TC) is the minimum dollar cost of producing some quantity of output. This is the total economic cost of production and is made up of variable cost, which varies according to the quantity of a good produced and includes inputs such as labor and raw materials, plus fixed cost, which is independent of the quantity of a good produced and includes inputs that cannot be varied in the short term such as buildings and machinery, including possibly sunk costs.
Market share is the percentage of the total revenue or sales in a market that a company's business makes up. For example, if there are 50,000 units sold per year in a given industry, a company whose sales were 5,000 of those units would have a 10 percent share in that market.
The category development index (CDI) measures the sales performance of a category of goods or services in a specific group, compared with its average performance among all consumers. By definition, CDI measures the sales strength of a particular product category within a specific market.
Return on marketing investment (ROMI) is the contribution to profit attributable to marketing, divided by the marketing 'invested' or risked. ROMI is not like the other 'return-on-investment' (ROI) metrics because marketing is not the same kind of investment. Instead of money that is 'tied' up in plants and inventories, marketing funds are typically 'risked'. Marketing spending is typically expensed in the current period.
Customer profitability (CP) is the profit the firm makes from serving a customer or customer group over a specified period of time, specifically the difference between the revenues earned from and the costs associated with the customer relationship in a specified period. According to Philip Kotler,"a profitable customer is a person, household or a company that overtime, yields a revenue stream that exceeds by an acceptable amount the company's cost stream of attracting, selling and servicing the customer."
A product's average price is the result of dividing the product's total sales revenue by the total units sold. When one product is sold in variants, such as bottle sizes, managers must define "comparable" units. Average prices can be calculated by weighting different unit selling prices by the percentage of unit sales (mix) for each product variant. If we use a standard, rather than an actual mix of sizes and product varieties, the result is price per statistical unit. Statistical units are also called equivalent units.
Sales effectiveness refers to the ability of a company's sales professionals to “win” at each stage of the customer's buying process, and ultimately earn the business on the right terms and in the right timeframe. Improving sales effectiveness is not just a sales function issue; it's a company issue, as it requires deep collaboration between sales and marketing to understand what is working and not working, and continuous improvement of the knowledge, messages, skills, and strategies that sales people apply as they work sales opportunities.
A sales territory is the customer group or geographical area for which an individual salesperson or a sales team holds responsibility. Territories can be defined on the basis of geography, sales potential, history, or a combination of factors. Companies strive to balance their territories because this can reduce costs and increase sales.
Annual growth rate (AGR) is the change in the value of a measurement over the period of a year.
Price premium, or relative price, is the percentage by which a product's selling price exceeds a benchmark price. Marketers need to monitor price premiums as early indicators of competitive pricing strategies. Changes in price premiums can also be signs of product shortages, excess inventories, or other changes in the relationships between supply and demand. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 54 percent responded that they found the "price premium" metric very useful.
Volume projections enable marketers to forecast sales by sampling customer intentions through surveys and market studies. By estimating how many customers will try a new product, and how often they’ll make repeat purchases, marketers can establish the basis for such projections.
Marketing spending is an organization's total expenditure on marketing activities. This typically includes advertising and non-price promotion. It sometimes includes sales force spending and may also include price promotions. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 52 percent responded that they found the "marketing spending" metric very useful.
Relative market share indexes a firm's or a brand’s market share against that of its leading competitor. Market concentration, a related metric, measures the degree to which a comparatively small number of firms accounts for a large proportion of the market. These metrics are useful in comparing a firm’s or a brand’s relative position across different markets and in evaluating the type and degree of competition in those markets.
“The incentive plan needs to align the salesperson’s activities with the firm’s objectives.” Toward that end, an effective plan may be based on the past (growth), the present, or the future.
References
As of July 29, 2011, this article is derived in whole or in part from Marketing Metrics: The Definitive Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance by Farris, Bendle, Pfeifer and Reibstein . The copyright holder has licensed the content in a manner that permits reuse under CC BY-SA 3.0 and GFDL. All relevant terms must be followed.
- 1 2 3 4 Farris, Paul W.; Neil T. Bendle; Phillip E. Pfeifer; David J. Reibstein (2010). Marketing Metrics: The Definitive Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. ISBN 0137058292. The Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB) endorses the definitions, purposes, and constructs of classes of measures that appear in Marketing Metrics as part of its ongoing Common Language in Marketing Project.