Supply Chain & Channel Management

Course Description:

This course covers an overview of marketing channels and channel management. It focuses on physical distribution as a functional area within the firm and its interface with channel intermediaries. Topics covered include retailing, wholesaling, franchising, industrial marketing, transportation, warehousing, location, inventory control, and channel design. The distribution channel is one of the four Ps of the marketing mix, providing many essential services to end-customers that the firm cannot efficiently provide itself. But, the distribution channel is not just a tool through which the firm reaches its end market.

The channel members are customers in their own right, with their own needs. Further, they market not only the firm’s products but also competitors’ products and, increasingly, their own private label products. Thus, channel members are conduit, customer, and competitor rolled into one, and their motivations and objectives are often not aligned with those of the firm. Selecting and managing the channel is the focus of this course

Course Learning Outcomes:

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able:

• To develop, implement, critically evaluate, and hone the “go to market” strategy for a firm.
• To examine how a manufacturer develops its “go-to-market” strategy and the issues it must consider in both the initial choice and subsequent evolution of its channel structure.
• To consider the fundamental tension between the firm and its channel members that arises from their divergent goals and evaluates strategies for conflict resolution and channel coordination.
• To focus on the power balance between the firm and its channel members, and is aimed at understanding how the key marketing mix decisions at the disposal of both parties influence performance.
• To examine the challenges faced by consumer product manufacturers in gaining and retaining distribution, and how both manufacturers and retailers use promotions, store brands, and customer loyalty programs as sources of leverage.