Free CLEP Principles of Marketing Practice Test (2026)

A company sells its home printers for about what they cost to make, and it earns most of its profit on ink cartridges that fit only its own printers. Which pricing strategy is the company using?

A 16-year-old who doesn't play on any team buys the same basketball shoes as his favorite professional player, hoping to be more like him. For this teen, the player belongs to which kind of reference group?

A company that makes landline telephones describes its business as "we make telephones" rather than "we help people stay in touch," and it loses most of its customers when mobile phones take over. The company's mistake is best described as

A lumber wholesaler takes orders from building-supply stores and has the mill ship the lumber straight to each store. The wholesaler takes title to the lumber, and the risk that goes with it, from the time it accepts an order until delivery, but it never stores or handles the lumber. This wholesaler is a

A state health department uses research, targeted ads and school programs to persuade teenagers not to start vaping. It isn't selling any good or service. This effort is best described as

Before building any prototype of a new electric scooter, a company shows groups of target consumers a written description and drawings of it, then asks how useful they find it and whether they would buy it. Which stage of new-product development is this?

A shoe company identifies a group of customers who want running shoes in half sizes above size 16. The group is easy to identify and can be reached through a specialty website, but it has only a few hundred members nationwide, too few to pay for a separate product line. Which requirement for a useful market segment does this group fail to meet?

A clothing store buys a jacket for $45. The store sets prices so that the markup is 25% of the selling price. What should the selling price of the jacket be?

A sporting-goods company has staff track competitors' websites, new patents, job postings and trade-show displays, and it sends managers a summary every week. This activity is part of the company's

A soft-drink brand that almost everyone already knows runs summer ads that simply show its logo and bottle at beaches and ballparks, with no new product information and no comparisons with rivals. The main objective of these ads is to

Before buying a car, a shopper reads a long magazine review of the model she already favors. The review describes both its strengths and some serious weaknesses, and she understands it correctly. A month later she can recall the strengths in detail but almost none of the weaknesses. This illustrates

A phone maker seals its batteries so they can't be replaced and stops sending software updates for each model after two years. Critics of marketing would most likely call this an example of

A company's line of DVD players is in the decline stage. The company cuts advertising, research and sales-force spending almost to zero but keeps selling to its remaining loyal customers, hoping to collect profits for as long as they last. This strategy is called

A fast-food chain cuts the salt and sugar in its menu, even though many customers preferred the old recipes, saying it wants its customers to be healthier years from now. This approach best reflects the

A shopper buys a different brand of cookies almost every week. She is fairly satisfied with each brand and doesn't think hard about the choice; she just likes to try something new. This is an example of

A furniture maker starts selling its sofas on its own website at lower prices than the independent retailers that buy and resell its sofas, and those retailers complain to the maker that they are losing sales. The conflict between the maker and these retailers is an example of

A company sells a newly invented sensor that warns homeowners of water leaks. Most consumers have never heard of it and wouldn't think of shopping for one. For these consumers, the sensor is

A juice company's sales have been falling, and its managers don't yet know why. Before designing a large survey, they hold a few small group discussions with former customers to learn which issues are worth studying. This first step is

A small company makes kayaks only for whitewater racers and puts all of its marketing effort into that one segment. Compared with targeting several segments, the main risk of this strategy is that

A credit card carries the names of both a major airline and a bank, and cardholders earn airline miles on every purchase. This is an example of

After an investigation, a government places extra duties on imported washing machines because it finds that a foreign maker was selling them in that country for less than they cost to produce, to win market share. The duties are a response to

Critics note that one way of setting a promotion budget ties spending to the sales figures themselves, even though promotion is supposed to drive sales, so the budget shrinks just when a sales slump calls for more promotion. Which method is this?

At a hospital that is buying new imaging equipment, a purchasing assistant decides which vendors' sales reps get meetings and which brochures reach the doctors who will make the choice. In the buying center, the assistant plays the role of

Which of the following is part of a company's microenvironment rather than its macroenvironment?

An airline's website changes the fare for the same seat several times a day, depending on demand, the time left before departure and the number of seats still unsold. This practice is