Consumer Marketing Channels Business Marketing Channels
The figures above show various marketing channels for consumers and businesses. These marketing channels can be divided into two basic categories, direct and indirect.
Direct Marketing Channel (Channel 1 in both figures)
The direct marketing channel has no intermediary levels (levels between producer and consumer or business customer). Businesses who choose this channel are selling directly to the final consumer or final business customer. Many businesses choose this marketing channel. For example, the direct marketing channel is one of the multiple channels that Apple uses to sell products to consumers. When developing the iPhone K for the market planning assignment, we incorporated this strategy into our marketing and selling techniques. We decided that the iPhone K would be for sale at Apple stores and on the Apple website to reach consumers directly.
Indirect Marketing Channels (Channels 2 & 3 in both figures)
Indirect marketing channels have one or more intermediary levels. Firms who choose these marketing channels are not selling directly to consumers, but rather to marketing intermediaries. In addition to the direct marketing channel, Apple uses indirect marketing channels to reach its final customers. It sells to retail firms (marketing intermediaries) such as Best Buy, Walmart, and Target who then sell the products to the final consumers. This is another channel my group chose to use in the marketing and selling of the iPhone K.
To read more about how we used direct and indirect marketing channels in the process of developing a marketing plan for the iPhone K, follow the link below.
Learning Portfolio 