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To achieve a full understanding of the role of marketing from plan to profit requires a knowledge of the basic building blocks. This textbook introduces the key concepts in the art or science of marketing to practising managers. Understanding your customers and consumers, the 4 Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion) provides the basic tools for effective marketing. Deploying your resources and informing your managerial decision making is dealt with in Unit VII introducing marketing intelligence, competition, budgeting and organisational issues. The logical conclusion of this effort is achieving sales and the particular techniques involved are explored in the final section.

Should western exporting manufacturers use independent resident distributors or employee salesforce when they enter emerging markets? Existing theories provide different answers and contradict one another. This inductive study of 17 western exporting manufacturers led to propositions exploring that question. Findings from this study suggest that both channel structures be associated with advantages and disadvantages. Choices of channel structure depend on market entry stages and market conditions.

This paper considers a supply chain with a manufacturer (she) selling through an online retail platform (he) and studies the channel structure choices of two firms when investing in advertising.

The authors assume that the platform provides the manufacturer with an agency and/or reselling channel; thus, there are three possible channel structures: agency channel, reselling channel and dual channel. By developing a game-theoretic model, the authors investigate the channel structure choices of two firms when advertising separately, simultaneously and cooperatively and analyze the optimal combination strategy of channel structure and advertising scheme for both firms.

When the advertising efforts of the two firms are independent of each other, the equilibrium results show that different advertising schemes lead to different channel choices. For the manufacturer, it is optimal to choose the dual channel structure and adopt the advertising scheme that both subsidizes platform advertising and advertises on her own. For the platform, this combination is also optimal at a high commission rate; otherwise, the advertising scheme in which both firms advertise simultaneously is optimal and he is better off switching from the dual channel structure to the reselling channel structure as interchannel substitution intensity increases. The above results still hold for complementary advertising efforts and asymmetric marginal advertising costs, while in the case of substitutable advertising efforts, one firm may ride on another firm's advertising efforts, leading to different strategic combinations.

This paper not only provides useful guidance for manufacturers and platforms in channel selection and advertising strategy, but also theoretically enriches the literature on manufacturer encroachment.

This paper's aim is to identify structural and relational factors influencing the upstream channel management of organized retailers in India.

In‐depth interviews were conducted with 15 organized retailers and two manufacturers in India. Data were analyzed using the thematic network analysis technique from qualitative research. The authors use the framework of institutional theory to guide the discussion.

The findings suggest that government regulations influence the supply chain structure in India. Relational bonds offset the uncertainty borne of weak institutions. Informational transparency and long‐term orientation foster trust between channel partners. This trust, in turn, leads to collaborative partnerships.

The findings have implications for multinationals planning to enter the Indian retail industry. There is a need to understand complex regulatory and social institutions in India. The uniqueness of these institutions calls for adaptive strategies toward channel management.

The paper contributes to the literature on the supply chain structure in India. Despite growing interest in the Indian retailing industry, not many studies reflect on the specific B2B exchange structure in India. The paper fills this gap and also provides several marketing implications for multinational retailers planning to enter the Indian market.

As manufacturers and retailers aim to increase return on marketing investments, value- vs experience-related trade promotions gain attention. These two trade promotions become complicated in the presence of different retail format strategies (generalist vs specialist) and channel structures (direct to retailer vs distributors). Building on trade promotion literature, this study aims to show the main effect of value-related and experience-related trade promotions on retailers’ sales and the moderating role of different retail strategies and channel structures.

The authors use unique panel data from 8 personal care brands with 1,920 observations to test the hypotheses. The authors investigate how consumer goods manufacturer sells products using different channels structures and retail strategies. Estimated panel regressions provide the empirical evidence and robustness analyzes provide extra confidence to the findings.

Results reveal higher retail sales when the manufacturer invests in value-related trade promotions rather than experience-related trade promotions. The results also demonstrate how the manufacturer successfully invests in trade promotion by adequately accounting for channel structure and retail strategy. While temporary price reduction’s positive effect on retail sales is enhanced in generalist retailers (e.g. supermarket stores), shelf display’s positive impact is enhanced in specialist retailers (drug stores).

The authors used unique panel data accounting for 15 months, limiting the findings. The results supported the investment allocation decisions in each period. However, future research may evaluate the effectiveness over a longer period and thoroughly address each investment’s seasonal effects.

The authors unveil how retailers achieve higher sales with value-related trade promotions when compared to experience-related trade promotions. The authors also shed light on the way manufacturers design their relationships with generalist and specialist retailers by working in direct and indirect channels. Trade promotions yield better results when the direct channel structure couples with a retailer’s generalist strategy.

The empirical findings help manufacturers achieve success in trade promotions by developing an equitable evaluation to contrast value- and experience-related promotions accounting for generalist and specialist retail strategies and direct and indirect channels.

The consumers want to purchase the target products in the right place, whereas the manufacturers want to allocate their possible products to optimal distribution channels. The manufacturer must know how to handle itself in this business. The study aims to examine the B2B channel decision-making with different product qualities in a non-cooperative supply chain.

The authors develop a B2B Manufacturer-Stackelberg game as an analytical framework, combining asymmetric preference of purchase channels choice by the consumers, a continuous quality setting of the manufacturer and differential channel structure to study the manufacturer’s product strategy and channel optimisation. By horizontal comparisons across four channel structures, product variety can be classified into the differential quality-level zone through exogenous quality intervention, and the preference of manufacturers in each quality-level zone within the structures can be ranked.

Theoretically and practically, the hybrid-channel structure should be completely neglected when the direct channel dominates the retail channel. In contrast, dual-channel structures dominate single channels irrespective of the channel power, and channel preferences between high-quality and low-quality zones are stable, whereas the preference in medium-quality zone is unstable. In addition, the supply chain system cannot achieve global Pareto improvement without any additional coordination mechanism between the manufacturer and the retailer.

The extended results by numerical examples suggest that the bigger the area of the medium-quality zone, the more significant the product variety of the manufacturer.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to investigate performance of both manufacturer-owned channel and traditional retail channel when the manufacturer encroaches upon the traditional channel in different forms (brick-and-mortar and online form) under different market structures (Stackelberg and Bertrand). To examine the effect of acceptance of the online channel and travel cost on profits of two channels.

The Hotelling model is employed to depict consumers ' channel choice behavior, where the consumer surplus captures travel cost, spatial distance and consumer heterogeneity in acceptance of the online channel. A game-theoretical framework is developed to determine the optimal encroachment form and market structure for both manufacturer-owned and traditional retail channels.

This paper finds that, in either form of encroachment, Stackelberg market structure always outperforms Bertrand market structure, and channel choice significantly relies on parameters, i.e. consumer acceptance of the online channel and travel cost. Moreover, a Pareto zone is proposed in which both channels consider the strategy that the manufacturer opens bricks-and-mortar channel under Stackelberg market structure as the optimal strategy.

The present work fills a theoretical and practical gap for a structured analysis of the channel performance when the manufacturer encroaches upon the incumbent retail channel in different forms and under different market structure.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview and organisation of the literature which deals with the interaction of economic development and marketing channel structure. The interaction between economic development and the structure of marketing channels is a topic worthy of serious study for at least the following reasons: (1) It generates descriptions of actual channels that exist at present in different countries. Such descriptions could be of great use to international marketers. (2) It provides insight into the determinants of channel structure in different countries at different levels of economic development. It thus helps to explain the nature of channels and how present channels came to have the structures that they do. Generalisations may then be developed which will aid in the prediction of changes and directions that channel structure will take in specific areas and nations. This is of use for both managerial and social purposes. (3) It could provide insight into how macro‐channel structure strategy could be used as a tool in economic development.

Explores the natural channel phenomena, i.e. the local or national channel which has evolved to serve producer and consumer alike. Further, provides a descriptive construct which identifies the forces (or elements) which influence channel design. Contends that a thorough understanding (and use) of the natural channel would enable a firm to enhance its strategic competitiveness. Proposes a series of strategic managerial considerations which refocus channel design attention on the natural channel concept.

When an international firm enters an overseas market, international distribution channel structure is very important. Distribution channel structures decisions are made by examining the company’s degree of commitment and risk, and are not only difficult to change but initial wrong decisions may lead to poor results. Therefore, channel satisfaction is higher when channel structure is appropriate for the foreign market. Examines factors leading to a firm’s satisfaction with international marketing channels. Builds on existing studies about consumer satisfaction and distribution channel structures. As theoretical background, a transaction cost factor and the discrepancy model is used to examine the determinants of satisfaction. Findings from a survey of Korean electronic export corporations show that a firm’s relative performance and control variables provide significant explanations for channel satisfaction, and the channel structure variable is supported by null hypothesis.