“O”

Objectives: specific, measurable, agreed upon, realistic and time based outcomes or results that an entity plans to achieve in a given period.

Oligopolistic Competition: a competitive market situation in which there are only a few sellers each seller has a high percentage of the market and cannot afford to ignore the actions of the others.

Oligopoly: a market situation in which there are only a few sellers; in an oligopolistic situation the marketing action of one firm will have a direct effect on the others. This behaviour is normally negative and can include oligopoly price setting and market share agreements.

On Boarding: is a Human Resources term which describes the process of introducing a new employee to their workplace to get them up-to-speed as quickly as possible and contributing to the business (see wiki). In Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) or Customer Experience Management (CEM) it is the process to ‘welcome’ a new customer on-board with a business which may supply highly technical products and services. On-Boarding enables customers to be managed through the adoption process and to enable a successful implementation in the business by the vendor with their client.

Open Promotion: a sales promotion which is advertised widely and available to all who wish to enter. This is normally used to build a customer marketing database with business to consumer promotions.

Operating Expenses: all the operational costs incurred by an entity carrying out day-to-day activities.

Opinion Leader: an individual who actively provides specialist opinions about products, services, markets to others, about the traits of a market or market segment.

Opportunity Cost: the value of the ‘known’ benefit forfeited by choosing one alternative over another.

Organisational Structure: the way in which an entity has arranged its reporting lines of management and communication, and allocated duties and responsibilities

Outbound Telemarketing: telemarketing in which a company uses trained Tele-salespeople (Telesales) to sell to customers via telephone.

Outdoor Advertising: advertising by means of posters and signs, stationary or mobile. A well known national and international player is JC Decaux.