Week 3 Discussion- Marketing channel strategy
The Marketing channel strategy – one of the “Four P's” of the marketing mix (“place,” along with
product, price, and promotion) – comprises the set of decisions made, and structures created, that help
move a manufacturer's product or service from its place of manufacturer to the ultimate end-user. With
the emergence of multiple channels, the structure of Retail Supply Chains (RSC) has transformed from a
typical network consisting of supplier, original equipment manufacturers, distributors, retail stores,
retailers and end users (Sharma et al., 2021). This paper focuses on two of the marketing channel
strategies: direct selling and agent selling.
Direct Selling and Agent Selling
Dong et al. (2018) posited there are two common selling strategies used by many firms in industry. The
first one is direct selling, under which the firm centralizes its selling channel and directly sells the
products to customers. The second one is agent selling, under which the firm downward decentralizes its
selling channel and sells the products through an intermediary retailer. Both selling strategies can be
widely observed in real practice. For instance, some manufacturers like Apple and Zara directly sell their
products to customers in the end markets. However, Random House, the largest English-language
publisher, sells books online through some retailers such as Amazon, Books A Million and Barnes &
Noble. On the other hand, firm's selling strategy is not immutable in the long term, especially in the age
of the information. After selling in a short term, both firms and customers may learn more information
about the market and product. As such, firms may change their selling strategies accordingly. This
phenomenon can also be observed in industry. For instance, Japanese fast-fashion retailer Uniqlo
stopped selling through JD.com, which is one of China's major e-retailers, in 2015; whereas another
fashion brand, H&M, started to sell its products through Alibaba's virtual marketplace Tmall in 2018. In
other words, firms may use different selling strategies in different periods.
