The Nature and Importance of Marketing Channels
Few producers sell their goods directly to the final users. Instead, most use intermediaries to bring their products to market. They try to forge a marketing channel (or distribution channel)—a set of interdependent organizations that help make a product or service available for use or consumption by the consumer or business user.
A company’s channel decisions directly affect every other marketing decision. Pricing depends on whether the company works with national discount chains, uses high-quality specialty stores, or sells directly to consumers via the Web. The firm’s sales force and communications decisions depend on how much persuasion, training, motivation, and support
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Thus, intermediaries play an important role in matching supply and demand.
In making products and services available to consumers, channel members add value by bridging the major time, place, and possession gaps that separate goods and services from those who would use them. Members of the marketing channel perform many key functions. Some help to complete transactions:
• Information: Gathering and distributing marketing research and intelligence information about actors and forces in the marketing environment needed for planning and aiding exchange.
• Promotion: Developing and spreading persuasive communications about an offer.
• Contact: Finding and communicating with prospective buyers.
• Matching: Shaping and fitting the offer to the buyer’s needs, including activities such as manufacturing, grading, assembling, and packaging.
• Negotiation: Reaching an agreement on price and other terms of the offer so that ownership or possession can be transferred.
Others help to fulfill the completed transactions:
• Physical distribution: Transporting and storing goods.
• Financing: Acquiring and using funds to cover the costs of the channel work.
• Risk taking: Assuming the risks of carrying out the channel work.
And a new item that has been added to the list of functions to be performed within the supply chain is environmental sustainability. Take the case of Toronto-based Grand &
Marketing- Infilling a market lead ethos thought out, researching on external opportunities to understand current and potential customers, developing the marketing plan and strategy. Managing budgets and market success.
Marketing research is very important component of a business used to identify and define the opportunities and problems that they will encounter on the market. The aim
the expectation for the condition of the good, the transfer of ownership and risk of loss
Before launching or expanding a business venture, there needs to be an understanding of the industry, its competitors, and its customers. Market research is vital in assisting companies in the decision-making process and their marketing direction. Data from marketing research is important because it provides companies with ways to identify opportunities, identify market potential, minimize chances of loss, devise effective marketing strategies, gauge customer satisfaction, and serve as an evaluation tool.
Marketing research is the method/methods that connect the clients, buyers and users to the marketer through data found from research to find and outline marketing opportunities and dilemmas. The general aim of marketing research is to recognize and evaluate how altering the marketing mix which is comprised of 4 features: product, price, promotion and place, influences customer behaviour.
There must be a mutual agreement between the buyer and seller, which is established by an offer and acceptance of the offer.
Market research consists of information collection regarding the prevalent market situation, and its analysis. “We define marketing research as the systematic design, collection, analysis, and
Marketing research is what informs business’s make decisions by helping it to understand the changing dynamics of its market. This involves finding out more about customers, competitors and the overall marketing environment.
Marketing is an integrated communications-based process through which individuals and communities are informed or persuaded that existing and newly-identified needs and wants may be satisfied by the products and services of others....
(a) " Negotiation " means a transfer of occupation, whether voluntary or involuntary, of an instrument by a people other than the subject to a person who thereby becomes its holder.
Marketing channels are very important to both the manufacturer and the consumer. These channels are the way the manufacture releases their product to the consumer for purchasing. Manufactures can choose either a direct channel which is the means of selling customers or accepting orders from them. A sales force calls on customers and prospects to present information on products and persuade them to place orders. Retailer channel is the channel that manufacturers sell their goods directly to large retailers such as Amazon which then sell onto the final consumers. wholesaler channel typically buys and stores large quantities of several producers’ goods and then
Communication in marketing channels can serve as the process by which influential information is conveyed, shared decision making is encouraged, programs are created, power is put into effect and commitment and loyalty are built. Communication is the bond that holds together channels of distribution. Marketing communication builds awareness of a business, its products and the business’s position through customer interaction materials such as brochures, press releases, web sites and other forms of direct, indirect and interactive marketing. Marketing communication represents the “voice” of the brand and is one way to establish a dialogue and build relationships with consumers (Kotler & Keller, 2007, p. 279). Altadena Computer Company must have an in-depth understanding of the company’s target audience and the process of buying, selling, and communicating to customers.
Alternatively it can be defined in a far broader sense as 'People, equipment and procedures to gather, sort, analyze, evaluate and distribute needed, timely and accurate information to marketing decision makers' (Gray Armstrong, 2008)
To be successful in business, "a consumer does not buy a whole of physical components of the product but it is usefulness, function, satisfaction of consumer's needs, solving the problem, etc" (Dubrouski, , p.1). "That is why the product is a whole of tangible and intangible components which means satisfaction of consumer's needs and desires, solving the problem"(Dubrouski, p.1). Companies and managers must learn to utilize marketing research, as well as, strategy skills to fulfill customers' satisfaction. Management has to focus on exclusive marketing challenges presented by the new era of the 21st century. Management has to be able to utilize inventive, dominant, and cost effective marketing techniques that will support the future success of the organization. Companies must meet,"the increasing importance of services as part of a product (offer, offering package) which cannot be neglected" (Dubrouski, p.1). Exploring the purpose of market research, as well as, evaluating the importance of such research, facilitates managers in realizing the importance of marketing to an organization's success and to be globally competitive.
This assignment is about marketing, where I will produce a marketing strategy for a new or existing product. This unit introduces the major principle and functions of marketing; I will look on customer needs, and creating a suitable strategy or marketing mix, which will satisfy customer needs. In this unit I will experience the marketing process from carrying out initial research about a market, investigating the principles of functions of marketing and the way in which it contributes generating income/profit in a business. Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals.