Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Marketing Channel Management

Marketing Channel

The company that come together to bring products and services from their point of origin to their point of consumption.

Transvection  Wroe Alderson (researcher and professor from usa in the 40s to 60s. He is the “father of distribution”, supply chain management, logistics etc.) includes a number of transactions.

Odd that transvection concept is not included, or Wroe Aldersons thoughts, in the book.

Transformation of resources

An insightful comment:
“From meaningless heterogeneity to meaningful heterogeneity through transient intermitted stages of homogeneity”

Heterogeneity means manifold, diversity, multiplicity, (mangfold)

Point of origin – utgangspunkt

Intermittendt – something in the middle (Something that is intermittent happens occasionally rather than continuously)

The point of origin is the raw material (e.g. oil. – meaningless for the consumer, or even the gas station)

Point of consumption – the product must be meaningful for the consumer.

Resources are put into processes to create something meaningful. We need a lot of stages in between, some transient intermitted stages of homogeneity. That means simplification, specialise to create gasoline, specify and simplify. It is to complicated for one entity to do the whole process.


A marketing question:
Segmentation: gather similar customer with similar need in categories, it should be differences between groups.

The Aldersons thoughts are in way segmentation, way before segmentation was a trend in academia. This is homogeneous categories. The business need to segment the market because its to complex and to messy to serve the whole market at once. This is done to reduce complexity. Reduce it by segmentation. This is done by applying certain tools (Kotlet, etc.) Reality isn’t that easy, of course.








Two kind of manufactures:
- branded goods (Sony, Mercedes etc)
- Private label manufactures

Intermediaries: (wholesale)
- Wholesalers/distributors
- manufactures representatives
- Agents
- Brokers

Department stores (Retail)
- Hypermarkets (giant supermarkets)
- Convenience stores
- Supermarkets
- Buying clubs
- Online retail

Specialized retail functions:
- Insurance
- Financial
- Credit card companies
- Logistics and shipping
- IT
- Marketing departments


End users
- business
- private household consumption

Product development – the use of the product is obviously very important. The developer have some kind of use in mind. There is no clear link between their thoughts and the actual use. People can use their product to what they want. Many examples of how end users use products in ways not anticipated.






Example: How sms-services started. Not one marketing manager, one research analyst had anticipated this. But it just exploded.









The output of the channel is a

Service output (two components)

 Product features
 Channel feature – the added features through the channels. Ancillary service

The service output is the output of the channel.

Penrose (1959): “The theory of the growth of the firm”
Topics are: Resources, resource heterogeneity and services.
She talks about products as composed out of resources and resource elements. Its not resources in it self, (not the gas in it self) that we pay for, but the services that the gas can give me. I don’t pay to put gaz in my tank, but to be able to use it, to power up my car, to drive somewhere. That’s the service, that is in it self heterogenic. Many ways to use gas. (boat, car, make fire, bombs, etc), creates different services. Gas is not heterogeneous in it self. But the usage in it self could be plentiful.

Remember that end users are a part of the channel. This is obviously very important to remember, because it makes it much more complicated. We need to know how the products are used.

There is an utility to have a product at a certain time at a certain time.

Think of to next time:
The assumptions in the book

The book describes several ways to design and implement marketing channels. They even talk about the right way of marketing channels.
Problem: what is right here? It is no right way to design a marketing channel. There is really no way to design marketing channels. You are not alone. Communication is important. It is left out in the model.




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