Which Marketing Channel Is Right for Your Company?

For many of us, the word channelmay conjure up images of a waterway. One may imagine Mark Twain’s vivid descriptions of the ever-changing Mississippi River channel in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn first published in 1884. Or one might envision the English Channel, a formidable geographic barrier that has kept mainland Britain secure from successful foreign invasion since 1066. On the other hand, the term may remind you of the handy wireless device that allows us to flip from one football game to another on an autumn weekend. Regardless of the image, each implies the presence of a passageway, a real or imaginary conduit, allowing certain processes to occur. Such imagery offers a surprisingly accurate description of a marketing channel. The term marketing channel was first used to describe the existence of a trade channel bridging producers and users. Early writers compared marketing channels with paths through which goods or materials could move from producers to users. This description makes it easy to understand how the term middleman came into being as