Manufacturers sell their products through multiple distribution channels, from supermarkets to the internet. The most important objective for any manufacturer is to make its distribution channels sell products with a standard selling strategy. Whether its retail, wholesale or business-to-consumer distribution channel, it must fully complement the manufacturers products or services selling in different markets.
Unfair channel practices:
The unfair channel practices can definitely affect a manufacturers business perspectives. Once a manufacturer has selected and developed a unique product or business idea, it is needed that its packaging, brand and pricing is well maintained by its distribution and sales channels. It is a key hurdle for a manufacturer to carry out successful marketing and branding strategy against the unfair practices from its online distribution channels. It can lead to a serious conflict and a feeling of dissatisfaction amongst different selling channels damaging its brand, market value and finally loosing overall business prospects in the marketplace.
Need of tracking distribution & marketing channels:
a) Channel conflicts:
Conflict comes in many different ways as manufacturers sell their products using multiple channels. Sometimes these channels compete to reach the same set of customers competing in the same product category, industry or at same business levels. It definitely results in to channel conflicts invariably finding its way back to the manufacturer. Conflicts also arise when suppliers bypass the standard selling channel by directly approaching the end user. The same scenario repeats when one channel targets customer segments already served by an existing channel. It leads to channel members either retaliate against the manufacturer or simply stop selling its products in the market. Tracking these conflicts for resolutions by extracting online market information thus becomes very critical to the manufacturer.
b) Higher discrepancy in pricing:
Channels are designed with a specific pricing discrepancy at every level. If a retailer or a wholesaler is selling the same manufactured product with very low or high pricing differences, it will definitely affect the marketplace. Price-effectiveness is a serious concern to the pre-designed business strategies affecting the manufacturer’s business relationships with its channels. Tracking the pricing differences thus becomes a key factor to the manufacturer.
c) Deceptive promotional efforts:
Channels must check on extremely deceptive promotional efforts or offers at any level. If a retailer is offering the same manufactured product with very misleading discount offers it will definitely affect the other retailer’s selling strategy. There should be measured promotions to maintain price-effectiveness and sustain brand image at all distribution channel levels.
Challenges in tracking different channels:
Tracking distribution and marketing lifecycle is not easy and requires the analysis of a big volume of data to gain a fully accurate view. Once this is done, analysis can be undertaken to define the way to attribute sales and distribution results to the various marketing channels.
It’s fairly easy to sustain many marketing tactics to a certain period. However, pricing, packaging & promotions are among those criteria that need real-time tracking. So the manufacturer has to invest time finding information about its channels to know more about their internal competition. Doing this manually can drastically affect core competency. Herein, there is role of automated web data extraction which extracts data, transform & load it – ensuring delivery of right information at the right time, in the right format that saves time and money.
Aruhat: DataCrops web data extraction platform:
DataCrops web data extraction platform for ‘Online Market Intelligence’ is designed to effectively build market intelligence for organizations. It helps gaining business analytics, competitive intelligence, brand intelligence and ultimately empower resources by automatically extracting data from multiple web sources. It assists in keeping tap on information like product prices, product reviews, price movements and competitor moves in media.
Web sources include, webpages, blogs, deep web, login-protected sites, RSS feeds, social media. The solution enables automated scheduled data delivery to key decision makers with preferred reports via dashboard, email, FTP, integrate with other IT infrastructure.
