Strategic Marketing - Essay Example

However it is accomplished, the satisfaction of all physical distribution needs in the marketing channel must be accomplished for the rest of the channel to function successfully. The selection and use of physical distribution facilitating agencies is quite different than the selection and use of facilitating agencies for other channel services. In most cases other than for physical distribution, the facilitating agency will be employed and paid for by whichever channel member needs it. For physical distribution, however, the manufacturer or marketer will normally locate, select, and pay for the services of agencies involved in physical distribution (McCalley, 1992, p. 43). Channel strategy literature informs us about channel-facilitating agencies that can provide a variety of services for the manufacturer or marketer of products.

Marketing services in this context needed depend on what can be expected from the channel members and the capabilities of the manufacturer. In this case not only strategies are required but other governance and management issues are also of significance that are most commonly the selected marketing channel members as they have the ability to ship and store products at the wholesale or retail levels in the market. These are actually the intermediaries that provide all or most of the physical distribution functions.

In conditions where the channel members are unable to provide the needed services, the manufacturer has the option of providing the services itself or employing facilitating agencies to perform them. Therefore the need for all or some of these services or for other physical distribution services depends on manufacturers’ ability to themselves satisfy the key physical distribution requirements of the marketing channel to be managed. Let us review that in order to help us in determining what is