Aiming at the theme of the establishment and management strategy of marketing channels, this paper points out the meaning and characteristics of marketing channels. Explain the importance of establishing marketing channels; This paper expounds the marketing channel management strategy.
Keywords: marketing channel; Establish; Management; Importance; tactics
1 The meaning and characteristics of marketing channels
? Marketing channel refers to all enterprises or individuals that obtain or help to transfer the ownership of a commodity or service when it is transferred from producers to consumers. Simply put, marketing channel is a specific channel or path in the process of goods and services transferring from producers to consumers. American marketing authority Philip? Kotler:? Marketing channel refers to all enterprises or individuals that obtain or help to transfer the ownership of a commodity or service when it is transferred from producers to consumers. Features: ① The starting point is the producer, and the end point is the consumer (life consumption) and the user (production consumption); ② Participants are all kinds of middlemen in the process of commodity circulation; (3) The premise is that the definition of commodity ownership distribution is: in an economic and reasonable area, commodities are selected, processed, packaged, divided and assembled according to the requirements of users, and delivered to the designated place on time.
2 the importance of establishing marketing channels
For manufacturers, the construction of marketing channels is an important part of enterprise marketing strategy, which directly determines the development of enterprise product market, the final sales of enterprise products and the economic benefits of enterprises. Affected by the planned economy for a long time, China's enterprise market terminal organization form is single, and enterprises lack the choice of members in the marketing channel organization. Marketing channel management is mostly in a loose contract management state, and manufacturers have weak control over channels. Marketing channel is the channel for manufacturers' products to flow to consumers. The management and control level of manufacturers plays a vital role in improving the market share of products, and the competition in marketing channels will become more intense. Therefore, every manufacturer must strengthen the establishment of marketing channels.
3 to establish marketing channels to adapt to the new economic situation
The market competition in the information society emphasizes speed, and factors such as rapid product upgrading, rapid changes in consumer behavior, rapid response from competitors, and rapid changes in information technology all restrict the mode of establishing marketing channels. Therefore, simplification, flexibility, interaction, high efficiency, high automation and networking will be the basic principles of marketing channels in the information society.
3. 1 Improve the conventional marketing channels. From the perspective of agents, we always hope to create operating profits, create long-term and stable sales sources, establish a relatively stable sales network, and hope to get greater support from suppliers. At the same time, agents also hope to seek the regional competitive advantage of their own enterprises by successfully launching good brands. For suppliers, in addition to strategic establishment? Customer-centric? The basic principles of "relationship management" should be embodied in two aspects: market expansion and marketing, so as to improve the traditional marketing channels.
3.2 Appropriate expansion of integrated direct sales channels, suppliers must appropriately expand direct sales channels, mainly for three reasons: First, it will help to change the unfavorable situation that suppliers rely too much on sales agents. Suppliers should expand sales channels and divert customers under the condition of limited market demand, which will put some pressure on the operation of agents, so as to urge them to straighten their positions and actively cooperate with suppliers to do a good job in sales. Second, it helps to reduce sales costs and increase income. At present, when the cost of sales agency is too high, direct selling reduces the long-term payment of sales agency fees, which can undoubtedly reduce the cost of sales. Third, it helps to improve the quality of sales service and promote sales.
3.3 Ways to win over channel members Middlemen should make decisions based on information from manufacturers and other aspects of the market, many of which are provided by manufacturers and their business representatives. According to the principles of bounded rationality, insufficient information and asymmetry, manufacturers and their business representatives should constantly publicize all kinds of information that is beneficial for middlemen to join the sales channel through various channels, influence their decision-making and urge them to join the marketing channel.
4 marketing channel management strategy
In every product marketing channel, there are different degrees of cooperation and contradictions among channel members. In general, the cooperation between channel members is often dominant, and manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers form a distribution channel for the benefit of both parties. They meet each other's needs through a series of businesses. Compared with the single business of a single enterprise, the cooperation of channel members can bring greater economic benefits to all parties. However, there are often some contradictions in each product distribution channel, such as? Industrial and commercial contradictions? And then what? Business conflict? . The goal of channel management decision-making is to strengthen cooperation among channel members and mediate contradictions among channel members. Who makes channel management decisions? Head of the channel? Formulate. The task of channel management includes three parts: selecting channel members, motivating channel members and evaluating channel members.
4. 1 channel member selection. The importance of channel member selection is highly related to the distribution density of the company. In other words, if the company chooses a smaller distribution density, the more important it is to choose its distribution members; On the contrary, if the distribution density is high, the importance of channel member selection will be reduced accordingly. In general, the selection of channel members must consider the market scope, product policies, geographical advantages, product knowledge, expected cooperation degree, financial status and management level, promotion policies and technologies, comprehensive service capabilities and other conditions of intermediary institutions.
4.2 encouragement from channel members. The premise of encouraging and encouraging channel members to work hard requires manufacturers to first understand the needs and wishes of various middlemen. The manufacturer must make it clear that the distributor is an independent operator, not the employer of the manufacturer; Middlemen are willing to accept products welcomed by customers, not manufacturers' own products; Middlemen are concerned with the sales of all products, not the sales of a certain product. These are not good for manufacturers. Manufacturers should try their best to avoid under-incentive and over-incentive. When the manufacturer gives the middleman more preferential terms than he needs to achieve the level of cooperation and hard work, there will be excessive incentives, resulting in an increase in sales and a decrease in profit margin. When the conditions given by manufacturers to middlemen are too harsh to motivate middlemen to work hard, there will be insufficient incentives, which will lead to lower sales and lower profits. Therefore, manufacturers must determine how much efforts should be made and what efforts should be made to encourage middlemen.
Generally speaking, the basic incentive level of middlemen should be based on the combination of trading relationships. If the incentives for middlemen are still insufficient, manufacturers can take two measures: increasing the gross profit margin available to middlemen, relaxing credit conditions, or changing the combination of trading relationships to make them more beneficial to middlemen; Adopt artificial methods to stimulate middlemen and make them make greater efforts.
4.3 Evaluation of channel members. In addition to selecting and motivating channel members, manufacturers must regularly evaluate their performance. If the performance of channel members is excessively lower than the established standards, it is necessary to find out the main reasons and consider possible remedial measures. When giving up or changing the intermediary will lead to worse results, manufacturers have to tolerate this unsatisfactory situation. In the absence of worse results, manufacturers should ask the middlemen with poor performance to improve within a certain period of time, otherwise their qualifications will be cancelled.
In addition to signing the performance responsibility contract of the middleman, the manufacturer must also issue the sales quota regularly to determine the current expected performance. Manufacturers can list the sales of middlemen in a certain period of time and rank them according to the size of sales, which can promote backward middlemen to strive for their own honor and advanced middlemen to safeguard their existing honor.
refer to
[1] Philip? Kotler. Marketing management [M]. Beijing: Renmin University of China Press, 200 1.590-592.
[2] Gao Tiesheng, Ren Linshu. Marketing channel management [M]. Beijing: Electronic Industry Press, 2003.3.
[3] Zhu Hua. Selected Analysis of Marketing Cases, Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 2009.46-247.
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