Six Classic Distribution Paradigms for Global Marketing Channel Strategy

Abstract

Global marketing has become an established fact of life for more and more businesses. Along with the large multinational corporations that have been operating on a global scale for decades, many middle market or even relatively small firms have already or will soon need to enter the global marketplace to enhance their long-term viability (Czinkota et al 1995). The growth of Internetbased e-commerce has accelerated this global trend. Marketing channels which provide the institutional structure that connects firms to the markets they serve have not escaped this global environment. In today’s world, marketing channel structure and strategy must be formulated in the context of globalization. The six distribution channel paradigms discussed are characterized as ‘classic’ because they have all appeared in the scholarly literature associated with marketing channels and distribution systems for many years and in some cases many decades.