To talk about my channel love, I have to start from Dujiangyan. Ten years ago, when I was a professional manager in an enterprise, I went to Dujiangyan on business in Chengdu. While marveling at Dujiangyan's wonderful workmanship, I accidentally realized that the channel phenomenon of commodity circulation is so similar to nature. From then on, I began to pay attention to distribution channels, hoping to find a solution to the problem of commodity circulation channels from the law of channel movement in nature along this line of thought. After some thinking, it is found that the channel is a dynamic system; The channel system has an internal power supply; The channel system can be designed and controlled; The river movement has inherent regularity, and the most important thing is that "the river is like water, drifting with the flow".
In the marketing "value chain" of modern consumer goods, channels are the most complex, subtle, difficult to control, and have the most potential and tension. In the whole marketing system, channels, as a main thread, organically connect the marketing elements of enterprises such as products, brands, services, prices, promotions, commodities, funds, manpower, information, management, etc., so as to produce synergistic effects and realize the value of marketing. For example, it is like a "pearl necklace". If all marketing elements are pearls, the channel is the "chain" connecting all marketing pearls and plays an important role in the marketing mix.
There are two schools of marketing practice in China, namely "channel-driven" and "brand-driven". Enterprises can build their own core competitive advantages through channel construction, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. According to the thought of marketing guru and philip kotler, the essence of marketing is the creation, dissemination and transmission of "customer value", and the marketing channel is an important way for enterprises to transmit and realize customer value. Channel is an important part of classic marketing 4Ps combination, because "it is increasingly difficult for enterprises to obtain sustainable competitive advantages through products, prices or promotion strategies" (Bert Rosenbloom), and "in today's highly homogeneous competition between products and markets, only communication and channels can create truly differentiated competitive advantages" (philip kotler). It can be said that channels are increasingly becoming the main force for enterprises to build competitiveness, and many enterprises operate channels as intangible assets. No wonder some people say, "whoever has the channel will have the future!" " "
From the teaching point of view, channel management belongs to the deepening and expanding course of marketing specialty, which constitutes an important part of the whole marketing theory system. In view of the important position of channel management in enterprise marketing, many schools offer this course for undergraduates, postgraduates and MBA students. But the problem is that few teachers dare to challenge this course because of the practical nature of channel management, which leads to the shortage of channel management teachers in colleges and universities. This is an important reason that affects the popularization of this course. Fortunately, this situation is changing, and channel management courses are also emerging in colleges and universities.
Judging from the teaching materials, there are not many teaching materials about channel management in the book market at present, and even fewer are of practical value, because professional managers engaged in channel management have no time or theoretical reserves to write good training materials, and most university professors lack first-hand experience in channel management and can't find a feeling. Representative textbooks abroad include Bert Rosenbloom's Marketing Channel: Management Vision and Anne T? Marketing channels such as the Koran and others. Although there are many literatures about meridian theory, which are systematic in content, rigorous in logic, rich in cases and beautifully printed, the words are somewhat obscure and the methods are not operable. Most cases come from the United States. After all, American background is not suitable for China's national conditions.
Most of the existing channel management textbooks in China draw lessons from American scholars' channel management theory and American experience, which are lack of readability and practicality and fail to solve the problem of localized application of channel management. The channel itself has the characteristics of localization and exclusiveness. China has a vast market, a complex channel structure and a rapidly changing economic environment. Facing the complicated and changeable market environment in China, it is not enough to solve the channel problem in China only by relying on the western channel theory. However, it is not easy to compile an applied channel management textbook with localization characteristics, which challenges the author's theoretical level and practical experience. Only with the experience of enterprise channel management and the theoretical basis of marketing specialty can we make the channel problem clear and give students effective theoretical guidance and strategic guidance, otherwise it will only be a point. Fortunately, the author has worked as a marketing manager in an enterprise for 8 years and has rich experience and profound understanding of channel management. Then he taught the course "Distribution Channel Management" in colleges and universities for many years, during which he published more than one channel research paper 10, which provided a strong theoretical basis and practical experience guarantee for the compilation of "Marketing Channel Management".
Marketing Channel Management is an applied textbook for undergraduate and graduate students, so it is based on the actual "working process" of enterprise channel management. Based on the ideas of "channel system theory" and "channel value chain", this book interprets the essence of channel management from the aspects of channel connotation cognition, channel strategic model, channel structure design, channel member selection, channel member incentive, channel power and control, channel conflict resolution, channel balance and maintenance, channel evaluation and innovation. The chapter "Balance and Maintenance of Marketing Channels" has been creatively added to Marketing Channel Management, and the frontier topics such as deep distribution and channel flattening, direct sales and pyramid selling, customer relationship maintenance, channel "promotion mode", China distributor transformation, channel strategic alliance, electronic channels, other non-store channels and new media channels have been especially discussed. Many of these chapters are exclusive and original contents, which are the crystallization of the author's years of experience in enterprise channel management, and have strong operability and valuable practical value. It is especially suitable for undergraduates, graduate students and MBA students majoring in marketing and business administration, and it is also a rare pillow reference book and management training material for enterprise managers.
In order to dedicate a good teaching material to students and teachers, the author pays special attention to the innovation of channel theory, the operability of methods and strategies, the closeness between theory and practice, and the transformation of methods and strategies into management skills. This book talks about channel management from the perspective of production enterprises, highlights the strategic content of channel management, and embodies the readability and systematicness of theory and the localization and practicability of strategy.
1? Unique perspective
"Marketing Channel Management" cuts into the discussion of commodity circulation channels from the unique perspective of Dujiangyan's "Channel Enlightenment", so as to illustrate that there are many truths between natural channels and commodity circulation channels, aiming at guiding students to broaden their horizons and understand the true meaning of channel management.
2? Theoretically readable
Marketing channel management tries to avoid using obscure language and lengthy sentences to express vague ideas in the writing process. Instead, it strives to be concise and fluent, accurately convey the strategies and methods of channel management in concise language, and at the same time supplement the cutting-edge knowledge of channel management to increase readability.
3? system integrity
This textbook follows the logical thinking of "channel cognition → channel strategy → channel design → channel construction → channel incentive → channel control → channel conflict → channel maintenance → channel evaluation", which constitutes a stepped knowledge module and ability module of channel management, which conforms to the practical logic of enterprise marketing channel management and is convenient for students to learn, understand and master.
4? Localization of cases
Channel management has strong localization characteristics. Therefore, in the process of compiling this textbook, all the cases of China enterprises, the latest cases, the cases around us and even the cases experienced by the author are adopted, and foreign cases are avoided to enhance the appropriateness and persuasiveness of the cases.
5? This method is practical.
Marketing channel management pays special attention to enriching the contents of operation strategies and methods, many of which are the summary of the author's years of marketing experience, such as "reverse traceability method" for finding customers, "distance principle" for customer relationship management, "process control" for accounts receivable, "goods smuggling and its governance strategy" and so on.
Marketing Channel Management was designed and edited by Dr. Zheng Ruihong from tianjin polytechnic university Management College. Based on the idea of compiling a high-quality channel management textbook, the author devoted himself to research and carefully designed it for more than a year, incorporating his years of theoretical research results and concentrating his years of teaching experience and channel management experience. It is the representative work of the author's thinking and research on channels for more than ten years, which contains many unique channel insights and unique operation methods, as well as many convincing cases, waiting to be shared with you. "Marketing Channel Management" was presented to my tutor, that is, Professor Guo Guoqing from the Business School of China Renmin University, and was fully affirmed by the teacher: "The content is substantial, the form is novel and distinctive." Although a few simple comments gave me great encouragement. Thanks to the teacher's encouragement, I will continue to learn and improve, and strive to make the marketing channel management into a boutique. At the same time, I would like to thank President Wu Zhongyuan, Secretary, Vice President Qi Qing and Vice President of tianjin polytechnic university Management College. It is because of their good academic atmosphere that I have a good mood to sit down and write a manuscript. Thanks to the strong support of Machinery Industry Press and Gao Wei, the author's years of channel thinking can be presented and communicated with you.