TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 8 described the decisions that should be taken when a company organises a channel or network of intermediaries who take responsibility for the management of goods as they move from the producer to the consumer. For each channel member the company must decide what type of relationship it seeks. Having established such a network, the organisation must next consider how these goods can be most efficiently transferred, in the physical distribution sense, from the place of manufacture to the place of consumption.
Physical distribution management (PDM) is concerned with ensuring the product is in the right place at the right time.
Both marketing practitioners and academics have regarded place as being the least dynamic of the four Ps' and have tended to focus on more conspicuous aspects of marketing. It is now recognised that PDM is a critical area of overall marketing management. Much of its expertise is borrowed from military practice. During the Second World War and the Korean and Vietnam wars, supplies officers had to perform extraordinary feats of PDM, in terms of food, clothing, ammunition, weapons and a whole range of support equipment having to be transported across the world. The military skill that marketing has adopted and applied to PDM is that of logistics. Marketing management realised that distribution could be organised in a scientific way so the concept of business logistics developed, focusing attention on, and increasing the importance of PDM.
Marketing practice has become increasingly sophisticated and managers are more aware...
