Industry WIKI

A seeding trial or marketing trial is a form of marketing, conducted in the name of research, designed to target product sampling towards selected consumers. In the marketing research field, seeding is the process of allocating marketing to specific customers, or groups of customers, in order to stimulate the internal dynamics of the market, and enhance the diffusion process. In medicine

A product's service life is its period of use in service. Several related terms describe more precisely a product's life, from the point of manufacture, storage, and distribution, and eventual use.

SERVQUAL is a research tool that measures customer perception of service quality by comparing what customers expect from a service to their assessment of the service actually delivered. The instrument was developed in the United States in the mid-1980s by researchers A. Parasuraman, Valarie Zeithaml, and Leonard L. Berry, and is designed for use in after-service evaluation processes. It

Sex differences in social capital are debated differences between men and women's ability to achieve their aims through social constructs such as trust, norms and networks. Social capital is often seen as the missing link in development. Social networks facilitate access to resources and protect the commons, whilst co-operation makes markets work more efficiently. Social capital has been

With respect to public companies in the United States, a shareholder resolution is a proposal submitted by shareholders for a vote at the company's annual meeting. Typically, resolutions are opposed by the corporation's management, hence the insistence for a vote. "Voting has long been recognized as one of the primary rights of shareholders." For publicly held corporations in the United

The shilling is a historical coin and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland. It was generally equivalent to 12 pence, one-twentieth of a pound (worth 240 pence before decimalization), and was largely phased out during the 1960s and 1970s.

The term Sklavenkasse (lit. 'slave-fund') was a travel and ransom insurance scheme designated to pay ransom for European seafarers who had been captured by Barbary Pirates in the Mediterranean and off the coasts of Western Europe and sold into the Barbary slave trade. Several North German free imperial cities set up their own slave funds which existed until the mid 19th century.

SmartLink is a discontinued RFID-enabled credit card-sized smartcard that was the primary fare payment method on the PATH transit system in Newark and Hudson County in New Jersey and Manhattan in New York City. It was designed to replace PATH's paper-based farecard, QuickCard, and there were plans to expand its usage throughout most transit agencies in the tri-state area. The SmartLink c

The social credit system (Chinese: 社会信用体系; pinyin: shèhuì xìnyòng tǐxì) is a national credit rating and blacklist implemented by the government of the People's Republic of China. The social credit system is a broad governance strategy to track businesses, individuals, and government institutions and enhance their perceived trustworthiness rather than a single system. It is based on varyi

Social media mining is the process of obtaining data from user-generated content on social media in order to extract actionable patterns, form conclusions about users, and act upon the information. Mining supports targeting advertising to users or academic research. The term is an analogy to the process of mining for minerals. Mining companies sift through raw ore to find the valuable mi

Social media in the fashion industry refers to the use of social media platforms by fashion designers and users to promote and participate in trends. Over the past several decades, the development of social media has increased along with its usage by consumers. The COVID-19 pandemic was a sharp turn of reliance on the virtual sphere for the industry and consumers alike. Social media has

SOFR Academy, Inc. is an American financial market infrastructure company focused on developing benchmark credit-spread infrastructure designed to complement risk-free reference rates in global capital markets. In connection with global reference rate reform and the transition away from the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), which underpinned approximately US$400 trillion in financia

Software product management (sometimes referred to as digital product management or just product management depending on the context) is the discipline of building, implementing and managing digital products, taking into account life cycle, user interface and user experience design, use cases, and user audience. It governs the development cycle of a product from its inception to the mark

Solidity is a programming language for implementing smart contracts on various blockchain platforms, most notably Ethereum. Solidity is licensed under GNU General Public License v3.0. Solidity was designed by Gavin Wood and developed by Christian Reitwiessner, Alex Beregszaszi, and several former Ethereum core contributors. Programs in Solidity run on Ethereum Virtual Machine or on compa

Sort codes are the domestic bank codes used to route money transfers between financial institutions in the United Kingdom, and formerly in Ireland. They are six-digit hierarchical numerical addresses that specify clearing banks, clearing systems, regions, large financial institutions, groups of financial institutions and ultimately resolve to individual branches. In the UK they continue

Sweet Tomatoes, which operated as Souplantation ( SOO-plan-TAY-shən) in Southern California, is a United States–based chain of all-you-can-eat buffet-style restaurants. The first location opened in 1978 in San Diego, California, where the company was headquartered. The company was incorporated as Garden Fresh Corp. in 1983. The company went public in 1995 but was taken private in 2004. T

In the Space Cola Wars, the major soft drink competitors Coca-Cola and Pepsi engaged in costly marketing campaigns and product tests to get their beverages into space, in continuation of the so-called "Cola Wars". The competition began in 1985 during the STS-51-F Space Shuttle mission, when astronauts tested specially designed soda cans from each company to see how the carbonated drinks

The Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List, also known as the SDN List, is a United States government sanctions/embargo measure targeting U.S.-designated terrorists, officials and beneficiaries of governments that are the U.S.'s enemies, and international criminals (e.g. drug traffickers). The list is administered by the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (

Spiral Knights is a massively multiplayer online game created by Three Rings Design and now owned by Grey Havens. The free-to-play, Java-based game was released in 2011 and is still updated with new content and re-occurring events.

Squarespace, Inc. is an American website building, hosting, and domain registration company based in New York City. It provides software as a service for website building, e-commerce, domain registration, marketing, and online scheduling. The platform allows users to use pre-built website templates, drag-and-drop editing, and artificial intelligence-powered design tools.

The Stackelberg leadership model is a strategic game in economics in which the leader firm moves first and then the follower firms move sequentially (hence, it is sometimes described as the leader-follower game). It is named after the German economist Heinrich Freiherr von Stackelberg who published Marktform und Gleichgewicht (Market Structure and Equilibrium) in 1934, which described th

Stanley Fischer (Hebrew: סטנלי פישר; October 15, 1943 – May 31, 2025) was an American and Israeli economist who served as the 20th vice chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2017. Fischer previously served as the 8th governor of the Bank of Israel from 2005 to 2013. Born in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), he held dual citizenship in Israel and the United States. He previously served

A startup or start-up is a company or project typically undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to go public, startups are new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo-founder. At the early stages, startups face signifi

In finance, statistical arbitrage (Stat Arb or StatArb) is a class of short-term financial trading strategies that employ mean reversion models involving broadly diversified portfolios of securities (hundreds to thousands) held for short periods of time (generally seconds to days). These strategies are supported by substantial mathematical, computational, and trading platforms.

Stochastic calculus is a branch of mathematics that operates on stochastic processes. It allows a consistent theory of integration to be defined for integrals of stochastic processes with respect to stochastic processes. This field was created and started by the Japanese mathematician Kiyosi Itô during World War II.

The Stock Exchange, Antwerp or Handelsbeurs (in Dutch) is a building in Antwerp, Belgium, which opened in 1531 as the world's first purpose-built commodity exchange. The architectural design of the Royal Exchange in London was inspired by the Flemish style of the Antwerp Stock Exchange building. The Stock Exchange has been described as "the mother of all stock exchanges".

Stock market cycles are proposed patterns that proponents argue may exist in stock markets. Many such cycles have been proposed, such as tying stock market changes to political leadership, or fluctuations in commodity prices. Some stock market designs are universally recognized (e.g., rotations between the dominance of value investing or growth stocks). However, many academics and profe

Stocktwits is a social media platform designed for sharing ideas between investors, traders, and entrepreneurs. Founded in 2008 by Howard Lindzon and Soren McBeth, it introduced the use of the cashtag, a way to group discussions around a stock symbol preceded by a dollar sign. Stocktwits eventually became a standalone network where users share market sentiment, ideas, and strategies in

In finance, a stress test is an analysis or simulation designed to determine the ability of a given financial instrument or financial institution to deal with an economic crisis. Instead of doing financial projection on a "best estimate" basis, a company or its regulators may do stress testing where they look at how robust a financial instrument is in certain crashes, a form of scenario

A student loan is a type of loan designed to help students pay for tertiary education and the associated fees, such as tuition, books and supplies, and living expenses. It may differ from other types of loans in the fact that the interest rate may be substantially lower and the repayment schedule may be deferred while the student is still in school. It also differs in many countries in t

In finance, subprime lending (also referred to as near-prime, subpar, non-prime, and second-chance lending) is the provision of loans to people who may have difficulty maintaining the repayment schedule.

SunPass is an electronic toll collection system within the state of Florida, United States. It was created in 1999 by the Florida Department of Transportation's (FDOT's) Office of Toll Operations, which operates as a division of Florida's Turnpike Enterprise (FTE). The system utilizes windshield-mounted RFID transponders manufactured by TransCore and lane equipment designed by companies

In commerce, supply chain management (SCM) deals with a system of procurement (purchasing raw materials/components), operations management, logistics and marketing channels, through which raw materials can be developed into finished products and delivered to their end customers. A more narrow definition of supply chain management is the "design, planning, execution, control, and monitori

In financial regulation, a suspicious activity report (SAR) or suspicious transaction report (STR) is a report made by a financial institution about suspicious or potentially suspicious activity as required under laws designed to counter money laundering, financing of terrorism and other financial crimes. The criteria for when a report is required vary by country, but in general, a repor

Sustainable packaging refers to the design, manufacture and use of packaging with the aim of reducing environmental impacts over its life cycle while maintaining its functional and economic requirements. This involves increased use of life cycle inventory (LCI) and life cycle assessment (LCA) to help guide the use of packaging which reduces the environmental impact and ecological footpri

Systemically important financial market utilities (SIFMUs) are entities whose failure or disruption could threaten the stability of the United States financial system. To date eight entities in the U.S. have been officially designated SIFMUs.

The tar derby is the period in the 1950s marked by a rapid influx in both cigarette advertising focused on tar content measurements to differentiate cigarettes and brand introduction or repositioning focusing on filter technology. The period ended in 1959 after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman and several cigarette company presidents agreed to discontinue usage of tar or nico

The Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992 (c. 12) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which governs the levying of capital gains tax in the United Kingdom. This is a tax on the increase in the value of an asset between the date of purchase and the date of sale of that asset. The tax operates under two different regimes for a natural person and a body corporate.

The Co-operative, also known as Co-op, is a brand used by a variety of co-operatives based in the United Kingdom. It is not a single business, but a number of consumers' co-operatives spanning various sectors.

The Exchange TRX, also known as the TRX Mall and officially known as Plaza The Exchange TRX, is a shopping mall and complex situated next to the Bukit Bintang shopping district in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It is located off Jalan Tun Razak to the east and Jalan Kampung Pandan to the south. The term "TRX" in its name is a short form of Tun Razak Exchange, the area where the mall was develop

The Financier is a novel by Theodore Dreiser, based on real-life streetcar tycoon Charles Yerkes. Dreiser started writing his manuscript in 1911, and the following year published the first part of his lengthy work as The Financier. The second part appeared in 1914 as The Titan; the third volume of his Trilogy of Desire was also Dreiser's final novel, The Stoic (1947).

The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism is a non-fiction book written by literary theorist and author Walter Benn Michaels and first published in 1988 by the University of California Press.

The Laundromat is a 2019 American comedy-drama film directed by Steven Soderbergh with a screenplay by Scott Z. Burns. It is based on the book Secrecy World about the Panama Papers scandal by author Jake Bernstein. The film stars Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas, Robert Patrick, Jeffrey Wright, David Schwimmer, Matthias Schoenaerts, James Cromwell, and Sharon Stone.

The Limited is an American clothing brand sold exclusively through Belk. The Limited began with operating retail stores between the early 1960s and the late 2010s. In 2017, it became a brand owned by the private equity firm Sycamore Partners.

Theming is the use of an overarching theme to create a holistic and integrated spatial organization of a consumer venue. A theme is a unifying or dominant idea or motif on which any new construction idea, new style generation, any product is designed. It is the process of designing and constructing an object or space so that the particular subject or idea on which the style of somethin

Thomas and Thomasnet, formerly Thomas' Register of American Manufacturers, is an online B2B procurement platform for supplier and product sourcing in the U.S. and Canada. Its Thomas Network hosts over 500,000 vetted industrial product suppliers, distributors, manufacturers and service companies.

Thomson Reuters Corporation ( ROY-tərz) is a Canadian multinational content-driven technology conglomerate. The company was founded in Toronto, Ontario, and maintains its headquarters in the city at 19 Duncan Street.

A tie-in work is a work of fiction or other product based on a media property such as a film, video game, television series, board game, website, role-playing game or literary property. Tie-ins are authorized by the owners of the original property, and are a form of cross-promotion used primarily to generate additional income from that property and to promote its visibility.

Tokenomics is the study and analysis of the economic aspects of a cryptocurrency or blockchain project, with a particular focus on the design and distribution of its native digital tokens. The term is a portmanteau of words token and economics.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint is an online tactical shooter video game developed by Ubisoft Paris and published by Ubisoft. The game was released worldwide on 4 October 2019 for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One, and on 18 December 2019 for Stadia. The game is the eleventh installment in the Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon franchise and is a narrative sequel to the 2017 video game Tom

TradeCard, Inc. was an American software company. Its main product, also called TradeCard, was a SaaS collaboration product that was designed to allow companies to manage their extended supply chains including tracking movement of goods and payments. TradeCard software helped to improve visibility, cash flow and margins for over 10,000 retailers and brands, factories and suppliers, and s

A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or combination thereof that identifies a product or service from a particular source and distinguishes it from others. Trademarks also extend to non-traditional marks like drawings, symbols, 3D shapes like product designs or packaging, sounds, scents, or

In finance, a trading strategy is a fixed plan that is designed to achieve a profitable return by going long or short in markets.

Trickle-down fashion is a model of product adoption in marketing that affects many consumer goods and services.

The Turkish lira sign (symbol: ₺; image: ₺) is the currency symbol used for the Turkish lira, the official currency of Turkey and Northern Cyprus. It serves as a visual identifier for the lira in written and printed documents, as well as in digital communications. The design was presented to the public on March 1, 2012. The international three-letter code (according to ISO 4217) is TRY.

U-Pass BC is a public transportation monthly pass for post-secondary students valid throughout British Columbia and available to all students at participating institutions.

In 2021, the United States imposed government sanctions on Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite security force, and six of its officials on charges of involvement in serious human rights violations in the country. Under the Magnitsky Act, it was first such case of sanctions by the United States government on the South Asian country.

USDT is a US dollar-denominated stablecoin issued by Tether, designed to maintain a close value relationship with the US dollar. This article introduces its positioning, mechanism, verification checklist, and common misconceptions.

User research is the investigation to understand user behaviors, needs and motivations through interviews, surveys, usability evaluations and other forms of feedback methodologies. It is used to understand how people interact with products and evaluate whether design solutions meet their needs. This field of research aims at improving the user experience (UX) of products, services, or p

USI Tech Limited (also known as United Software Intelligence, or stylised as USI-TECH) was a Dubai-based cryptocurrency and forex platform trading provider, suspected to be a high-yield investment program and a Ponzi scheme. Prior to going offline with its users' funds, USI-Tech moved its website from a .com top-level domain, to a .io domain, while also appearing on a number of mirror do

VALS (Values and Lifestyle Survey) is a proprietary research methodology used for psychographic market segmentation. Market segmentation is designed to guide companies in tailoring their products and services in order to appeal to the people most likely to purchase them.

A venture capital trust or VCT is a tax efficient UK closed-end collective investment scheme designed to provide venture capital for small expanding companies, and income (in the form of dividend distributions) and/or capital gains for investors. VCTs are a form of publicly traded private equity, comparable to investment trusts in the UK or business development companies in the United St

Vipps is a Norwegian mobile payment application designed for smartphones originally developed by DNB. Vipps was released May 30, 2015 and, having reached 1 million users by November 5, 2015, Vipps became Norway's largest payment application. Although Vipps was developed by DNB, customers of any Norwegian bank can use it. Vipps is a member of the European Mobile Payment Systems Associatio

Virtual goods are non-physical objects and money purchased for use in online communities or online games. Digital goods, on the other hand, may be a broader category including digital books, music, and movies. Virtual goods are a subclass of intangible goods.

Visual marketing is the discipline of studying the relationship between an object, the context it is placed in and its relevant image. Representing a disciplinary link between economy, visual perception laws and cognitive psychology, the subject mainly applies to businesses such as fashion and design.

Visual merchandising is the practice in the retail industry of optimizing the presentation of products and services to better highlight their features and benefits. The purpose of such visual merchandising is to attract, engage, and motivate the customer towards making a purchase.

Vivek Paul (born 1958) is an Indian-American business executive and entrepreneur. He served as the vice-chairman of Wipro and CEO of its flagship business, Wipro Technologies. He also worked as a senior executive at General Electric, private equity investor at TPG, and a strategy consultant at Bain. He is the founder of KineticGlue, a tech startup that was successfully sold to BMC. He ha

Vix Technology (Vix) is an Australian company that designs, supplies and operates automated fare collection (AFC) systems, intelligent transportation systems (ITS), access, payment and passenger information display systems (PIDS) for the public transit industry.

Vocalink is a payment systems company headquartered in the United Kingdom, created in 2007 from the merger between Voca and LINK. It designs, builds and operates the UK payments infrastructure, which underpins the provision of the Bacs payment system and the UK ATM LINK switching platform covering 65,000 ATMs and the UK Faster Payments systems.

In marketing and quality management, the voice of the customer (VoC) summarizes customers' expectations, preferences and dislikes. According to the Association for Supply Chain Management (ASCM) the definition of voice of the customer is: "Actual customer descriptions in words for the functions and features customers desire for goods and services". Long term business success involves lis

Voice-based marketing automation (VBMA) refers to software platforms designed for marketing, sales, and support departments to measure, manage, and automate their phone conversations. Marketing departments, sales teams, and support agents use VBMA to initiate, manage, monitor, track, route, record, and report on sales and support phone conversations.

Waterstones Booksellers Limited, trading as Waterstones (formerly Waterstone's), is a British book retailer based in London, United Kingdom, owned by the American investment group Elliott Investment Management. As of 2025, it operates 316 shops, mainly in the United Kingdom and other nearby countries. As of 2024 it employed over 3,600 staff in Britain and Europe. The average Waterstones

Web-to-print, also known as Web2Print, remote publishing or print e-commerce is commercial printing using web sites. Companies and software solutions that deal in web-to-print use standard e-commerce and online services like hosting, website design, and cross-media marketing.

Westinghouse Electric Company LLC is an American nuclear power company formed in 1999 from the nuclear power division of the original Westinghouse Electric Corporation. It offers nuclear products and services to utilities internationally, including nuclear fuel, service and maintenance, instrumentation, control and design of nuclear power plants. Westinghouse's world headquarters are loc

Whole-life cost is the total cost of ownership over the life of an asset. The concept is also known as life-cycle cost (LCC) or lifetime cost, and is commonly referred to as "cradle to grave" or "womb to tomb" costs. Costs considered include the financial cost which is relatively simple to calculate and also the environmental and social costs which are more difficult to quantify and assi

WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress. It is designed for online merchants of all sizes using WordPress. Launched on September 27, 2011, the plugin gained popularity for its simplicity to install and customize and for the market position of the base product as freeware (even though many of its optional extensions are paid and proprietary). WooCommerce is developed

The World Branding Forum is a global nonprofit organisation based in London, England. The forum runs various programmes and organises conference, workshops and seminars. It operates a newsroom and publishes industry news on its website. It is also a media partner for various industry events. The forum's industry recognition programme is the World Branding Awards, which it organises annua

World of Warcraft (WoW) is a 2004 massively multiplayer online role-playing (MMORPG) video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment for Windows and macOS. Set in the Warcraft universe, World of Warcraft takes place within the fictional planet Azeroth, approximately four years after the events of the previous game in the series, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. The game was

Yang Cheng Tong (Chinese: 羊城通; Jyutping: joeng4 sing4 tung1; pinyin: Yáng chéng tōng; lit. 'Ram City Pass') is a contactless rechargeable stored value smartcard designed for paying the travel fares in the metro, buses, taxis and ferries in Guangzhou, China, along with most other cities in Guangdong, with the exception of Shenzhen. It was developed and managed by Guangzhou Yang Cheng Tong

Zesty.io is a SaaS cloud-based web content management system that allows companies (specifically mid-market and enterprise brands) to create, deploy, maintain, and optimize enterprise web properties. It is built on globally available Google Cloud Platform infrastructure and, as a SaaS product, requires no hardware or software resources. Zesty.io also allows for collaborative website buil

Zynga Inc. () is an American video game developer and publisher known for its social video game services. It was founded in April 2007, and it is owned by Take-Two Interactive since 2022, with headquarters in San Mateo, California. The company primarily focuses on mobile and social networking platforms. Zynga states its mission as "connecting the world through games".