Useful Vocabulary for Business Executives - from M to Z

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We’re going to go over the meaning of some business-related words. If you’re a business executive and currently attending an englishlci.com/esl-school-1.html, it’s important that you review them once in a while so you don’t lose track of their subtleties, since these words are the basic substance of your communication. We hope the following list helps you keep your English fluent and robust. Good luck!

Marketing - The study of markets and their behavior, based mainly on statistical research, with the aim to promote, sell and distribute a product or service. Marketing mixes a wide range of practices that include advertising, publicity, promotion, pricing, and overall packaging of the goods or services.

Merger - A fusion of two previously separate corporations into a new legal entity. Previous businesses are dissolved and their assets and liabilities moved into the rising entity.

Multi-level Marketing (MLM) - A business in which a person’s source of income isn’t limited to their own sales, but also proceeds from the sales made by people they have recruited, and also by people recruited by recruited people, and so on.

Network Marketing - A business built and sustained by a distribution network. Usually, such businesses are also MLM (see above).

Networking – As the name suggests, it’s a way of developing relationships in order to gain knowledge and grow your business base.

Outsourcing – When a company uses services from another business, such as accounting, payroll, IT, advertising.

Partnership - A business made up of two or more individuals legally regarded as a group of owners rather than a single entity.

Patent - A document stating that a certain idea or concept belongs to someone (inventor), and grants the inventor’s rights to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention for a limited time.

Public Relations (PR) - The deliberate promotion of a specific image for a business. Not to be confused with publicity, which refers only to the materials used in a specific stage of a public relations campaign.

Sales - The exchange of a product or service for money. It may also refer to this activity as a profession or to the department within a company that performs this activity.

Small Business Administration (SBA) - The United States Government Agency responsible of "providing customer-oriented, full-service programs and accurate, timely information to the entrepreneurial community".

Sole Proprietorship - A business owned and run by one person.

Strategic Alliance - An ongoing relationship between two businesses in which they combine efforts for a specific purpose.

Trademark - A form of legal protection for words, names, symbols, sounds, or colors that distinguish goods and services. The main difference with patents, in this sense, is that trademarks can be renewed forever as long as they are being used in business.

Venture Capital (VC) - A form of financing for a company in exchange for partial ownership and control of the business, over a limited time period, usually 3-5 years. Investments typically range from $500,000 to $5 million, although there are occasionally VC investments for as low as $50,000 or as high as $20 million.

Rachel Clarkson
Rachel Clarkson is an English teacher at LCI English englishlci.com/esl-programs-1.html and blogger at the englishlci.com/blog.