CHAPTER 9THE OMNICHANNEL PLAN: THE ROUTE TO MARKET
INTRODUCTION*
Our third chapter on different elements of the marketing mix builds on the previous chapter on personal selling. For many companies, sales occur not just through personal selling but also through a variety of other channels, from agents and distributors to direct sales online and by telephone. For some companies, indeed, personal selling has disappeared entirely. Furthermore, each of these channels can be crucial for service delivery.
Once, Place (route to market) was the dull, neglected P of the famous 4Ps of marketing. Companies' distribution policies were driven by mechanistic cost analysis: shipping and storage configurations, trade-offs between holding cost and the risk of being out of stock, and so on. But since the 1990s, digital technologies have transformed thinking on channels. Evans and Wurster 1997 noted how economic value was being split into physical and virtual (information) streams: the traditional economic trade-offs still held for physical distribution of goods and services, but the virtual stream of information exchange defied these rules. Digital experts advised companies to rethink Place as ‘spaces’ not ‘places’ and ...
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