TABLE OF CONTENTS Product-focused firms have rarely treated channel and media management as a strategic issue, and their relationships with other channel players have often been adversarial. Customer-centric businesses take the opposite view and establish a channel and media framework that manages the customer s experience at each point of contact they have with the company. We will explore this strategic marketing issue under the heading channel and media integration in this chapter. Throughout this book we consider channel and media as separate, but related concepts.
Media: We define media as the modes of communication between customers and their supplier. At the beginning of the 1990s, customers communicated with companies face-to-face (via sales representatives or in-store), by post and phone. This media choice now includes facsimile, sophisticated call centres and the internet, through devices such as personal computers (PCs), personal digital assistants (PDAs) and internet enabled-mobile phones (WAP (wireless application protocol), for example).
Channel: We define channel as the legal entity with which the customer contractually engages to provide goods or services. Channels are routes to market and they can be direct or indirect. Indirect channels include distributors, retailers and service providers.
For example, Norwich Union, the UK retail financial services provider, sells financial products directly to consumers and through independent financial advisers (IFAs). The media for its direct sales and service are the internet and call centres, but legal documents are sent by post. IFAs will deal with customers face-to-face but Norwich Union still sends IFA customers legal documents through the post.
