Marketing — Unit 2 — is about how a business finds its customers and convinces them to buy: researching the market, choosing who to serve, building a brand, setting a price, and getting the message out. It's one of the two most heavily weighted units on the exam. These guides explain the core ideas in plain English, with the exam in mind.
Why Marketing Matters on This Exam
Unit 2 carries 20–30% of the multiple-choice section and drives much of the Business Canvas Project — the target customer, the value proposition, the pricing, and the marketing plan all come from here. Master these concepts and you've locked down a large, high-value chunk of the exam. Marketing concepts also show up in the Business Concept Application free-response question — see the worked FRQ model answers for how they are scored.
The Guides
The Marketing Mix (4 Ps) →
Product, price, place, and promotion — and why they must work together.
Market Research →
Primary vs. secondary, qualitative vs. quantitative, and how research guides decisions.
Market Segmentation & Targeting →
Dividing a market, choosing a target, and building a customer profile.
Branding & Value Proposition →
What a brand really is, and how to write a value proposition that stands out.
Pricing Strategies →
Cost-plus, competitive, value-based, penetration, and skimming — and how price signals positioning.
Consumer Behavior →
How and why customers buy, the buying process, and what influences them.
Where This Fits in the Course
These concepts live in Unit 2 (Marketing). See them applied in the Peak & Pine case study and the Loop Threads canvas project, and test yourself with the practice questions. For the money side of the course, see the business finance, personal finance, business foundations, and management & strategy guides.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the marketing mix (the 4 Ps)?
The 4 Ps are Product, Price, Place, and Promotion — the four decisions a business aligns to market a product to its target customer.
What's the difference between primary and secondary research?
Primary research is new data a business collects itself (surveys, interviews); secondary research uses existing data collected by others (reports, statistics).
What is a target market?
A target market is the specific segment of customers a business chooses to focus on and can serve profitably, after dividing the broader market through segmentation.
These guides are educational and written for the AP Business with Personal Finance course. They explain concepts in simplified terms for study purposes.