Q: We hope you won’t mind if we say that your column last Friday sounded like it was commissioned by SM and not one of your more objective marketing diagnoses. We’re a group of graduating students majoring in marketing and avid readers of your column.
Every Friday, our marketing elective professor assigns your column to be debated upon next week. We’re a class of 30. Half the class takes the pro stand, siding with your column’s diagnosis and prescription, and the other half takes the opposite side. The two debating teams are each a “triad.” The rest of each half of the class consists of sources of support for their triad team.
Almost all of us do not have a favorable regard for distributors and retailers. Our elective professor refers to them as “thieving middlemen.” She says: “This would be a better marketing world without middlemen. They’re no better than usurers who live on the misery of others.” So please tell us what good do distributors and retailers really serve?
A: It’s unfortunate that you have an elective professor who is prejudiced against “middlemen.” We actually don’t mind a professor who is critical or even cynical about an important “actor” in the marketing performing art provided he/she acknowledges first the purposes and functions it is serving. This is what we propose to do as our answer to your question about what good do distributors and retailers serve.
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Let’s start by putting distribution in the total context of the marketing mix. The mix’s lead variable is the “base P,” or the product. It’s the lead marketing mix variable because the three other variables out of these “4 Ps” are in the service of the base P. That service is to bring the product to its target market segments.
Of the three “support Ps,” Matsushita says it is “placement” or distribution that is most critical. Placement comes in two forms, namely, “physical distribution” also known as logistics and “sales distribution” or retailing. Why is distribution critical? As we already mentioned in last Friday’s column, according to Matsushita, “no product will move unless it is first in place.”
