Product Channel Management Interfaces and Promotion Through the Marketing Channel

Answer

Product Channel Management Interfaces and Promotion Through the Marketing Channel

Manufacturers use different promotional strategies including push and pull to promote their products. that push strategy involves the manufacturers developing mutual cooperation and efforts in the establishment and implementation of the promotional strategies through directly working with members to create viable and strong promotional support. On the other hand, pull strategy involve the manufacturers building solid consumer demand for commodities to automatically force members to promote the products. The most common push promotional strategies include listing fees, in-store promotions, cooperative advertising, displays, promotional allowances, and selling aid. Even though many of the ‘push’ promotional strategies are trade, manufacturers often categorize them as consumer promotional. The chapter posits that effective promotions require trade shows, missionary selling, quota specification, training programs, logistics, and supply chain management.  First, logistics refer to the planning, implementation, and control of the physical flow of raw materials and finished goods from points of origin to points of use while supply chain management refer to the logistical systems which focus on inter-organizational management and close cooperation to integrate all the logistical operations into one channel.  Logistics plays a critical role in ensuring the movements of the correct quantity of the correct commodities to the correct place at the correct cost and time (Rosenbloom, 2013).  Accordingly, a logistics system consists of two components including system approach and total cost approach. The system concept combines the systems of order processing, handling raw materials, transportation, warehousing, inventory control, and packaging while the total cost approach attempts to minimize the costs involved carrying out the operations in system concept. Most importantly, any logistic system must have standards such as order cycle time, assortment constraints, and flexibility of order placement with the key elements of customer service being product availability, distribution system flexibility, and post-sale product support.

Effective promotions usually follow a well-defined product channel which entails product planning, the product life cycle, and strategic product management. Product planning involves determining the acceptability of the product by the channel members, whether the product fits into current assortment channel, and whether the product is likely to cause special problems to the members of the channel. On the other hand, product cycle encompasses introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Lastly, the strategic product management involves strategies such as product positioning, differentiation, brand strategy, line expansion, and product service strategy (Rosenbloom, 2013). To start with, product positioning involves the manufacturers’ attempts to have customers perceive the commodity in a certain way relative to the rival or competitive goods. Subsequently, product differentiation involves getting product look differently through branding from the competitive products. The chapters posit that product service strategy involves the provision of necessary service alongside the commodity to the final user, for example, though the channel members or authorized independent service stations. Moreover, the channel manger has different roles including consideration of internal cost, target market, channel, pricing, and competition rate (Rosenbloom, 2013). Among the above consideration, the manger faces a challenge in fostering pricing strategies which promote the cooperation of channel members because he or she has to minimize conflict at all means. In channel creation, the manager has to consider certain guidelines including product variations, profit margins, rival brands, special pricing deals, and the different classes of resellers. Other channel pricing issues include dealing with gray markets, changing pricing policies, control of channel pricing, price increases, and dealing with free riding.