Worksheet (DW#8): Delivering the Value for Distribution Channel Strategy
Direction: This discussion worksheet is prepared for students who want to know the essence of Place Strategy—also called Distribution Channel, Supply Chain, or Value Chain Strategy—as a part of value creation and delivery process. Specifically, this worksheet allows students to understand the underlying principles of the distribution channel, the roles of intermediaries in the distribution channel, how to develop an optimal multichannel structure, and some important issues for distribution channel strategy, among others. Section I has a list of issues to be discussed in class. For our in-depth discussion and your participation score, prepare your creative answers of all questions in Section I before the class—using your textbook or any other materials such as collected information from Internet—and submit your answer file in WORD format into the designated D2L dropbox folder by due date. Use the following filename format for your submission file (YourFirstLastName-DW#8-MRKT3013).
Section I: Important Issues to be Discussed
1. Recently, marketing practitioners have eagerly attempted to understand the underlying principles and roles of distribution channel and supply chain from the perspective of Value Chain proposed by Michael Porter (1985). First of all, discuss what it means by the value creation and delivery network as a variation of the Value Chain. Then, discuss the roles of distribution channels and supply chains in the value creation and delivery network (or value chain system).
2. Focusing on the design of effective distribution channels, discuss why intermediaries such as retailers or wholesalers between manufacturers and customers are required for improving the performance of any exchange process in the distribution channel system.
3. It is well-known that customers are considering multiple distribution channels when attempting to purchase any market offering. In this regard, companies have considered how to design an optimal multichannel structure in order to increase company’s competitive advantages from the perspective of multichannel customer management. Discuss how to design an optimal multichannel structure for the multichannel customer management.
4. Consider some important issues to be reviewed with respect to the management of the marketing distribution channels.
Section II: Article and Case Analysis
5. Read the article written by Neslin, et al. (2009) – “Key Issues in Multichannel Customer Management: Current Knowledge and Future Directions.” Discuss some important issues raised by this academic article regarding the multichannel customer management.
6. Read the HBR case – “CUTCO Corporation.” Analyze the current channel distribution structure and discuss how to design an optimal multichannel structure for the company’s competitive advantages.
