1) Downstream marketing channel partners, such as wholesalers and retailers, form a vital link between the firm and its customers.
2) A company's channel decisions directly affect the prices of its products.
3) Producers use intermediaries because they create greater efficiency in making goods available to markets.
4) The role of marketing intermediaries is to transform the assortments of products made by retailers into the assortments wanted by producers.
5) Each layer of marketing intermediaries that performs some work in bringing the product and its ownership closer to the final buyer is a channel level.
6) The number of products supplied indicates the length of a channel.
7) In a direct marketing channel, the producer sells directly to the intermediaries, who in turn sell directly to the customers.
8) Horizontal conflicts are conflicts between different levels of the same channel.
9) Vertical conflict occurs among firms at the same level of the channel.
10) A conventional distribution channel consists of one or more independent producers, wholesalers, and retailers; each seeking to maximize its own profits, perhaps even at the expense of the system as a whole.
11) A non-corporate VMS integrates successive stages of production and distribution under single ownership.
12) In a vertical marketing system, two or more companies at one level join together to follow a new marketing opportunity.
13) Multichannel marketing occurs when a single firm sets up two or more marketing channels to reach one or more customer segments.
14) Disintermediation occurs when radically new types of channel intermediaries displace traditional ones.
15) Marketing channel design calls for analyzing consumer needs, setting channel objectives, identifying major channel alternatives, and evaluating those alternatives.
16) Producers of convenience products and common raw materials typically seek exclusive distribution, a strategy in which they stock their products in as many outlets as possible.
17) Under the strategy of intensive distribution, the producer gives only a limited number of dealers the exclusive right to distribute its products in their territories.
18) Marketing channel management calls for selecting, managing, and motivating individual channel members and evaluating their performance over time.
19) As a part of intensive distribution, dealers are expected to refrain from selling the products of the producers' competitors.
20) Marketing logistics involves planning, implementing, and controlling the physical flow of goods, services, and related information from points of origin to points of consumption to meet customer requirements at a profit.
21) Reverse logistics refers to the moving of products and materials from suppliers to the factory.
22) In contrast to distribution centers, storage warehouses are designed to move goods rather than just house them.
23) Air carriers transport digital products from producer to customer via satellite, cable, phone wire, or wireless signal.
24) Intermodal transportation refers to the combination of two or more modes of transportation.
25) Electronic data interchange (EDI) is the digital exchange of data between organizations, which primarily is transmitted via the Internet.