10 Marketing Nouns You Need to Know

The Top 10 Marketing Nouns

The words below are the most common nouns in Principles of Marketing, a widely used marketing textbook. If you want to talk about marketing or plan on taking a marketing class in English, then these are the words to know.

Rather than listing the words alphabetically, I have listed them by frequency. If you only learn a few words from this list, it may be best to learn the ones from the top of the list rather than the bottom.

It is also important to remember that many of these words have multiple meanings. Only the meanings used most in marketing are listed here.

1. marketing /ˈmɑɚkətɪŋ/ [uncountable]
the activities that are involved in making people aware of a company's products, making sure that the products are available to be bought, etc.
  • marketing strategy
  • marketing research
  • direct marketing
  • sustainable marketing
Example: Companies must constantly watch and manage the marketing environment to seek opportunities and ward off threats.

2. company /ˈkʌmpəni/ [plural companies]
a business organization that makes, buys, or sells goods or provides services in exchange for money

Example: Unethical marketing eventually damages a company’s reputation and effectiveness.

3. product /ˈprɑːˌdʌkt/ [plural products]
something that is made or grown to be sold or used
  • product development
  • product line
  • product mix
  • product pricing
Example: There is generally a period of slow sales growth when a product is introduced in the market.

4. customer /ˈkʌstəmɚ/ [plural customers]
someone who buys goods or services from a business
  • customer value
  • customer relationships
  • customer service
  • customer-driven
Example: Brands that engage in a two-way conversation with their customers create stronger, more trusting relationships.

5. sale /ˈseɪl/ [plural sales]
the act of selling something; the exchange of goods, services, or property for money
  • sales force
  • sales promotion
  • net sales
  • sales rep
Example: The combined annual sales of all dollar stores amount to only about 15 percent of Walmart’s annual sales.

6. market /ˈmɑɚkət/ [plural markets]
all actual and potential buyers of a product or service
  • market share
  • target market
  • market leader
  • market segment
Example: Procter and Gamble’s six laundry detergent brands combined capture a whopping 62 percent of the U.S. laundry detergent market.

7. consumer /kənˈsuːmɚ/ [plural consumers]
a person who buys goods and services
  • consumer-generated
  • consumer electronics
  • consumer needs
  • consumer behavior
Example: Companies have to inform consumers about product benefits and carefully position products in consumers’ minds.

8. value /ˈvælju/ [uncountable]
the amount of money that something is worth; the price or cost of something
  • value proposition
  • value delivery
Example: Marketers alone cannot produce superior value for customers.

9. brand /ˈbrænd/ [plural brands]
products that are all made by a particular company and all have a particular name
  • brand name
  • store brand
Example: A global brand must engage with consumers in a way that feels local to them.

10. advertising /ˈædvɚˌtaɪzɪŋ/ [uncountable]
paid promotion of goods, ideas, or services
  • advertising age
  • online advertising
Example: No matter what method is used, setting the advertising budget is no easy task.


Where did these words come from?

To find out what kind of words are important to marketing students, I looked at the university textbook Principles of Marketing by Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong. This is the book used in the Introduction to Marketing class at the university I teach at, and it is also used at many other universities in introductory marketing classes.

To find the most important words, I used Antconc, a program that counts the number of words in a text. After using optical character recognition (OCR) on a scan of the book, I converted it to a txt file and loaded it into AntConc. Then I used AntConc's Word List feature to find the most frequent words.

However, just because a word is frequent does not mean it is important. The most frequent words in this book are actually "the", "and", and "to", but if you are studying academic vocabulary, I'm sure you already know those words! For that reason, I included only the most common lexical words (i.e. words that have a meaning), which all happened to be nouns.
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