| Macroeconomics | This is a part of economics that seeks to simplify and show the progress of whole economies rather than focus on individuals or groups (which is microeconomics). |
| Mail shop | An independent company which specializes in preparing materials for mailing. They affix labels, sort for bulk rates, prepare bagtags, insert in postal bags. |
| Mailing list | A list of customers or prospects used to mail catalogs or sale announcements. It is not a marketing database because it does not provide for a two-way communication with customers. |
| Mainframe | The largest computers used in business applications. They require raised floors, special air conditioning. Mainframes are recommended for marketing databases because of their power, input-output capability and speed measured in MIPS. |
| Make it rain | Slang terminology to express an eagerness to spend significant sums of money. The idiom refers to the visual appearance of paper currency, when thrown into the air by a spendthrift individual. |
| Managed fund | There are two ways in which a fund can be controlled: |
| MAND | Money, Authority, Need and Desire — the requisites of a qualified lead. |
| Manufacturer’s suggested retail price | A price suggested by the producer of a good. It can act as a pricing anchor as sellers will find it difficult to charge more than this price and will often be reluctant to charge less. |
| MAP | A price floor for vendors. There is often an implicit threat that manufacturers will cease supplying vendors who advertise prices below the specified floor. |
| Margin | A profit margin is how much money a company made. For example, a gross profit of £1m on sales of £10m is a 10% profit margin. Companies can compare profit margins with others to see how they are doing. |
| Margin | The difference between the cost and the selling price of a product or service |
| Marginal cost | The effect on total cost of producing one additional unit of output. It corresponds to the slope of the total cost function at each point. |
| Marginal external cost (mec) | The cost of producing an additional unit of a good that is incurred by anyone other than the producer of the good. See also: marginal private cost, marginal social cost. |
| Marginal private benefit (mpb) | The benefit (in terms of profit, or utility) of producing or consuming an additional unit of a good for the individual who decides to produce or consume it, not taking into account any benefit received by others. |
| Marginal private cost (mpc) | The cost for the producer of producing an additional unit of a good, not taking into account any costs its production imposes on others. See also: marginal external cost, marginal social cost. |
| Marginal product | The additional amount of output that is produced if a particular input was increased by one unit, while holding all other inputs constant. |
| Marginal product of labor | The increased output produced when one aditional person is hired. Note that this can be negative. |
| Marginal productivity of abatement expenditures | The marginal rate of transformation (MRT) of abatement costs into improved environment. It is the slope of the feasible frontier. See also: marginal rate of transformation, feasible frontier. |
| Marginal propensity to consume (mpc) | The change in consumption when disposable income changes by one unit. |
| Marginal propensity to import | The change in total imports associated with a change in total income. |
| Marginal rate of substitution (mrs) | The trade-off that a person is willing to make between two goods. At any point, this is the slope of the indifference curve. See also: marginal rate of transformation. |
| Marginal rate of transformation (mrt) | The quantity of some good that must be sacrificed to acquire one additional unit of another good. At any point, it is the slope of the feasible frontier. See also: marginal rate of substitution. |
| Marginal revenue | The change in revenue obtained by increasing the quantity from Q to Q + 1. |
| Marginal social benefit (msb) | The benefit (in terms of utility) of producing or consuming an additional unit of a good, taking into account both the benefit to the individual who decides to produce or consume it, and the benefit to anyone else affected by the decision. |
| Marginal social cost (msc) | The cost of producing an additional unit of a good, taking into account both the cost for the producer and the costs incurred by others affected by the good’s production. Marginal social cost is the sum of the marginal private cost and the marginal external cost. |
| Marginal utility | The additional utility resulting from a one-unit increase of a given variable. |
| Market | A way that people exchange goods and services by means of directly reciprocated transfers (unlike gifts), voluntarily entered into for mutual benefit (unlike theft, taxation), that is often impersonal (unlike transfers among friends, family). |
| Market cap | An estimation of the value of a company. It is equal to the shares outstanding multiplied by the share price. |
| Market capitalization rate | The rate of return that is just high enough to induce investors to hold shares in a particular company. This will be high if the company is subject to a high level of systematic risk. |
| Market failure | When markets allocate resources in a Pareto-inefficient way. |
| Market for lemons | The paper that earned economist George Akerlof a Nobel Prize. It predicted that all honest used car firms would be forced to leave the market if buyers (but not sellers) could not differentiate between good and bad used cars. |
| Market Penetration | The percentage of buyers you have as compared with the total households or businesses in the area you have selected as your market. |
| Market power | An attribute of a firm that can sell its product at a range of feasible prices, so that it can benefit by acting as a price-setter (rather than a price-taker). |
| Market Rate of Interest | The cost of borrowing money by your company from banks or other institutions. In discount rate computations, this amount is usually doubled to account for risk. |
| Market Research | Statistical analysis of customer data to draw overall conclusions as a basis for action. |
| Market segmentation | A market segment is a division of a market with similar characteristics (e.g. age, gender, religion) that cause them to demand similar products and/or services. For example, in an area with a large Jewish community, kosher foods are likely to be in greater demand. |
| Market share | The percentage or portion of the overall market controlled by one company. |
| Market-clearing price | At this price there is no excess supply or excess demand. See also: equilibrium. |
| Marketing mix | The combination of marketing elements used by a company to encourage consumers to purchase its product or service. Also known as the seven Ps: product, price, promotion, place, people, process, physical evidence. |
| Markup | Markup describes how much you add to the direct costs of your product or service to cover additional expenses and make a profit. For example, if your business sells custom T-shirts for $20 each and the cost of a blank T-shirt plus the labor and materials to customize each one comes to $12, your markup for that product is $8. |
| Mass market | Intended for use by or sale to the undifferentiated majority. |
| Mass Marketing | Selling to everyone through mass media such as radio, TV, or a newspaper, as opposed to database marketing which is aimed at a small selected audience. |
| Match code | A keyline. An extract of the name and address used to identify a specific record. Used in de-duping. |
| Matching market | A market that matches members of two distinct groups of people. Each person in the market would benefit from being connected to the right member of the other group. Also known as: two-sided market. |
| Maturity transformation | The practice of borrowing money short-term and lending it long-term. For example, a bank accepts deposits, which it promises to repay at short notice or no notice, and makes long-term loans (which can be repaid over many years). Also known as: liquidity transformation |
| Maximum retail price | A price ceiling applied to a vendor and set by a manufacturer. |
| Media | Communications channels that convey messages, such as radio, TV, magazines, direct mail. |
| Median voter | If voters can be lined up along a single more-versus-less dimension (such as preferring higher or lower taxes, more or less environmental protection), the median voter is the one ‘in the middle’—that is (if there is an odd number of voters in total), with an equal number preferring more and preferring less than what he or she does. See also: median voter model. |
| Median voter model | An economic model of the location of businesses applied to the positions taken in electoral platforms when two parties compete that provides conditions under which, in order to maximize the number of votes they will receive, the parties will adopt positions that appeal to the median voter. See also: median voter. |
| Medium run (model) | The term does not refer to a period of time, but instead to what is exogenous. In this case capital stock, technology, and institutions are exogenous. Output, employment, prices, and wages are endogenous. See also: capital goods, technology, institution, short run (model), long run (model). |
| Megabyte | A million bytes. Disks are rated in megabytes. |
| Member | in the context of a limited liability company, an individual or group that has partial ownership in the LLC |
| Memory | The amount of information that a computer can hold in its head while it is doing work. The more memory, the faster a computer can work, and the more complicated programs it can handle. New computers today have 32 megabytes of memory, which can be expanded. |
| Mentorship | A mentor may share with a mentee (or protege) information about his or her own career path, as well as provide guidance, motivation, emotional support, and role modeling. A mentor may help with exploring careers, setting goals, developing contacts, and identifying resources. |
| Menu costs | The resources used in setting and changing prices. |
| Merchandise trade | Trade in tangible products that are physically shipped across borders. |
| Merchant cash advances | With a merchant cash advance, the lender provides you with a lump sum based on your future sales, usually at a high cost. With invoice factoring, you sell your unpaid invoices to a lender at a discount |
| Mere | exposure effect Consumers will prefer offerings that are familiar over those that are unfamiliar. |
| Merge/purge | A software system used to merge many different input tapes in differing formats and put them into a common format for a mailing. Merge/Purge detects duplicates. |
| Merger | When two or more companies are combined into one. |
| Merit goods | Goods and services that should be available to everyone, independently of their ability to pay. |
| Micro | Micro-computer. Another name for a PC. |
| Microeconomics | This is a part of economics that concentrates on the actions of individuals and groups, rather than of whole economies (which is macroeconomics). |
| Microloan program | New or expanding small businesses are eligible for loans of up to $50,000. These loans can be used for working capital or purchasing inventory, equipment, furniture, supplies or machinery. Microloans can’t be used to pay existing debts or to purchase real estate. |
| Migration | The process of moving your database from one platform (such as an external service bureau) to another (such as your in-house mainframe). When you outsource, you should look ahead and be sure that you can migrate at some later date. |
| MINI | Smaller than Mainframe computers. They may also need raised floors and air conditioning. They are less expensive than Mainframes, and, generally do not have the power or input-output capability to manage a large marketing database. |
| Minimum acceptable offer | In the ultimatum game, the smallest offer by the Proposer that will not be rejected by the Responder. Generally applied in bargaining situations to mean the least favourable offer that would be accepted. |
| Minsky moment | The point in time when the value of a speculative asset class massively drops in value. |
| MIPS | Millions of Instructions Per Second. A measurement of the relative speed of a Mainframe computer. |
| MIS | Abbreviation for Management Information Systems. This term is used in many companies to refer to the data processing staff that runs the central company mainframe computer. |
| Missing market | A market in which there is some kind of exchange that, if implemented, would be mutually beneficial. This does not occur due to asymmetric or non-verifiable information. |
| Modeling | A statistical technique whereby you determine which pieces of data in your customer database explains the behavior of your customers. The output of a model is a series of weights which can be multiplied by customer data (income, age, length of residence) to create a score which predicts likelihood to respond to an offer. |
| Modem | A device permitting a PC or terminal to send information over a telephone line. You have to have a modem at both ends. Modems are rated in Baud rate. |
| Momentum trading | Share trading strategy based on the idea that new information is not incorporated into prices instantly, so that prices exhibit positive correlation over short periods. |
| Monetary policy | Central bank (or government) actions aimed at influencing economic activity through changing interest rates or the prices of financial assets. See also: quantitative easing. |
| Money | Money is something that facilitates exchange (called a medium of exchange) consisting of bank notes and bank deposits, or anything else that can be used to purchase goods and services, and is generally accepted by others as payment because others can use it for the same purpose. The ‘because’ is important and it distinguishes exchange facilitated by money from barter exchange in which goods are directly exchanged without money changing hands. |
| Money back guarantee | A promise by a vendor to refund the purchase price of a good, should the customer be unsatisfied. This reduces risk, thus increasing the price that he can charge. Many companies attach significant limitations upon such guarantees in order to reduce their own risk exposure while presenting an image to the contrary. |
| Money wage | The amount of money an employer pays to a worker. Also known as: nominal wage. |
| Monopolized market | Market in which a single firm produces all the goods that are sold. |
| Monopoly | A firm that is the only seller of a product without close substitutes. Also refers to a market with only one seller. See also: monopoly power, natural monopoly. |
| Monopoly power | The power that a firm has to control its own price. The fewer close substitutes for the product are available, the greater the firm’s price-setting power. See also: monopoly. |
| Monopoly rents | A form of economic profits, which arise due to restricted competition in selling a firm’s product. See also: economic profit. |
| Monopsony | A market characterized by many vendors but only one buyer. |
| Moral hazard | This term originated in the insurance industry to express the problem that insurers face, namely, the person with home insurance may take less care to avoid fires or other damages to his home, thereby increasing the risk above what it would be in absence of insurance. This term now refers to any situation in which one party to an interaction is deciding on an action that affects the profits or wellbeing of the other but which the affected party cannot control by means of a contract, often because the affected party does not have adequate information on the action. It is also referred to as the ‘hidden actions’ problem. See also: hidden actions (problems of), incomplete contract, too big to fail. |
| Mortgage (or mortgage loan) | A loan contracted by households and businesses to purchase a property without paying the total value at one time. Over a period of many years, the borrower repays the loan, plus interest. The debt is secured by the property itself, referred to as collateral. See also: collateral. |
| Mortgage-backed security (mbs) | A financial asset that uses mortgages as collateral. Investors receive payments derived from the interest and principal of the underlying mortgages. See also: collateral. |
| Motivational skills | Every organization needs motivated people. They need to have the right kind of motivator for every situation. Motivation in the workplace is important for a variety of reasons. |
| Mouse | A small switch on a wheel used to control a PC |
| MRI | Mediamark Research, Inc. is a nationwide survey organization that distributes consumer purchase behavior data. |
| MRR | An acronym for ‘monthly recurring revenue.’ It is literally the quantity of funds that are received by a firm on an ongoing monthly basis. One time fees, non routine income is excluded from this number. |
| Multi-buyer | A person who crops up on two or more independent rented lists. Multi-buyers usually respond better to a direct offer than other buyers. |
| Multiple Regression | A statistical technique used in modeling whereby you develop a formula which explains the relationship between several variables in explaining customer behavior. |
| Multiplier | See also: fiscal multiplier. |
| Multiplier model | A model of aggregate demand that includes the multiplier process. See also: fiscal multiplier, multiplier process. |
| Multiplier process | A mechanism through which the direct and indirect effect of a change in autonomous spending affects aggregate output. See also: fiscal multiplier, multiplier model. |
