Roshu: Channel Combat--how to choose channels

Author: Roshu

Many times, when we talk about the channel, we will only analyze the breadth, depth and relevance of the channel, but we rarely see any specific methods of operation. Today I will explain how to choose the channel through the actual case.

Channel is the channel between the product and the consumer, since it is a channel, there is a long and short, there is wide and narrow, single or more. At present, from the most commonly used types of channels, we can be divided into 2 major types:

The first: manufacturers directly to consumers, such as television shopping channels, E-commerce channels, the establishment of direct shop types, to consumers directly from the hands of manufacturers to take goods as the main features.

The second: manufacturers indirectly to consumers, such as agent distribution channels, chain franchise channels, to consumers to obtain the main products of manufacturers.

The first way to contrast the second, can let the manufacturer directly from the line to obtain consumer information, to remove the middle profit link, the profit to the consumers. Compared with the above, direct marketing is a point to many consumers a number of faces, therefore, in the capital, personnel on the investment is more. The second way is to share the market with other businesses, so the market risk is relatively small, but in the implementation of policy and supervision and other aspects of the management is relatively difficult to increase.

So, what is the choice? My approach is to analyze from a consumer perspective.

Why is that? It says that the channel is just a link between the product and the consumer, and assumes some responsibility for the path. Therefore, consumers can contact the product in some way, convenient purchase to the product is the real intention of the manufacturer. Otherwise set up a channel, the result of consumers can not buy manufacturers products, then this channel is invalid, which contains some of the 4C factors, that is, the convenience of purchase.

We use the beer in the FMCG as an example to analyze its channel layout. First, we scored clear on the http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/18499.html of the Beer "> Consumer crowd." Let's make a rough distinction between these categories:

1, daily drinking beer individuals, these people buy a way most will be living near the store, street shops, supermarkets.

2. Drink beer at parties, most of which are provided by the restaurant where the party is located.

Then we quickly understand that our channel is community shops, supermarkets, hotels. The next thing we need to think about is how to link these channels together to form a system.

1, community shops, street shops, restaurants, a large number of widely distributed, almost everywhere can be seen, obviously manufacturers are not so much manpower to develop.

2, supermarkets, supermarkets in the number of a region is a handful.

So we can be summed up as a channel supermarket, from the supermarket to develop community shops, street shops, restaurants. This is a theoretical mode of operation, because supermarkets do not have the function of sales expansion, so we have to borrow another channel to come in, including the supermarket channels, this is the regional agents or regional distributors. After this analysis, we know why the beer channel to choose and set up.

If it is not fast consumer goods, such as software, such as Kingdee software, how should the establishment of their own channels? We are still to analyze the next Kingdee financial software to use the target crowd. I'm going to divide it roughly into 2 broad categories:

1, enterprise use;

2. Use by government units;

We also need to ask ourselves, where do businesses and government units go to buy? Because the SOFTWARE PRODUCT is a kind of technical service, there is no entity, so the traditional store laying way is very difficult to use (but some technical service chamber of Commerce uses the CD-ROM or other way to package the product to the office).

The problems that arise are:

1, technical service-oriented manufacturers can not be like the entity product manufacturers, through the store could directly let consumers know. Therefore, in order to require enterprises or government organizations to know this information, it will require the promotion of personnel or advertising or other means of transmission, which is a matter of information dissemination. From this one can also be seen in the traditional industrial products if the channel is wide enough, then relatively speaking, through the advertising message is not a core focus.

2, know how to buy this information? Direct sales and agent distribution is still a choice, although the current communication developed, but the personnel personally demonstrated, explain always the focus of consumer needs, so Kingdee can use 3 of the way, the first is by dividing the national area into several large areas, and the office to do direct sales, The second is to sell the goods through the division of the regional agent distribution model, of course, it can also be attributed to the establishment of offices in various locations for management. The third is the direct e-business model, which is now the SaaS platform model used by Kingdee.

By way of the previous analysis, we choose and set up channels based on consumers ' information and convenience of purchasing products. The practice is very strong. Of course, when doing channel building, but also need to consider how to let consumers know information? How to refine the product advantage selling point? How to impress consumers by advertising or publicity or branding? How to do a good job in order to improve customer loyalty and reputation and so on content, here is not a breakdown.