Marketing Channel Strategy
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- Điều hướng trang này:
- Retail Intermediaries
| intermediary
encompasses any channel member other than the manu- facturer or end-user. We differentiate three general types: wholesaler, retailer, and specialized. Wholesalers Wholesalers include merchant wholesalers or distributors, manufacturers’ repre- sentatives, agents, and brokers. A wholesaler sells to other channel intermediaries, such as retailers, or to business end-users, but not to individual consumer end-users. Chapter 7 discusses wholesaling in depth. Briefly, though, we note that merchant wholesalers take title to and physical possession of inventory, store inventory (frequently from multiple manufacturers), promote products in their line, and arrange for financing, ordering, and payment by customers. They earn profits by buying at a wholesale price and selling at a marked-up price to downstream customers, then pocketing the difference (net of any distribution costs they bear). Manufacturers’ representatives, agents, and brokers rarely take title to or physical possession of the goods they sell (e.g., real estate agents do not buy the houses they have been enlisted to sell); rather, they engage in promotion and negotiation to sell the products of the manufacturers they represent and negotiate terms of trade for them. Some intermediaries (e.g., trading companies, export management companies) specialize in international selling, regardless of whether they take title or physical possession; we elaborate on these intermediaries in Chapter 9. Retail Intermediaries Retailers come in many forms: department stores, mass merchandisers, hyper- markets, specialty stores, category killers, convenience stores, franchises, buying clubs, warehouse clubs, direct retailers—to name just a few. Unlike purely whole- sale intermediaries, they sell directly to individual consumer end-users. Their role historically entailed amassing an assortment of goods that would appeal to consum- ers, but today that role has greatly expanded. Retailers might contract to produce private-label goods, such that they achieve effective vertical integration upstream in The OmnI-ChAnnel eCOsysTem 10 the supply chain. They also may sell to buyers other than consumers; Office Depot earns significant sales by selling to businesses rather than consumers (i.e., about one-third of its total sales), even though its storefronts nominally identify the chain as a retailer. In particular, Office Depot’s Business Solutions Group sells services to businesses through various routes, including direct sales, catalogs, call centers, and Internet sites, and it makes these business-to-business sales services available in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Ireland, Germany, Italy, and Belgium. 22 Chapter 6 discusses retailing in depth. tải về 5.39 Mb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
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