ABSTRACT

In the outline of the marketing system presented in Chapter 1, the routes linking the various institutions were termed marketing channels. The marketing channel operates by institutions responding to each other's behaviour and creating linkages. It is usual to consider the linkages as one of five types, each type being representative of one feature of behaviour within the system. The five are ownership, physical possession, communication, fmancing and risk. As the market system operates the pattern of linkage created by anyone of these creates a pathway, route or channel. An important survey of the channel concept and a review of its operation is found in Stern and EI·Ansary (1977). Definition and Function of Wmrketing Channels Alderson's (1957) text, Market Behaviour and Executive Action, defmes marketing channels as consisting of 'intermediary sellers who intervene between the original source of supply and the ultimate consumer' (p. 211). By the 1960s a wider defmition of the marketing channel was more in vogue. This included both manufacturer and consumer as institutions within the channel and may be typified by Clewett's (1961) view that the channel is

the pipeline through which a product flows on its way to the con· sumer. The manufacturer puts his product into the pipeline, or market· ing channel, and various marketing people move it along to the con· sumer at the other end of the channel.