3. He may confine sales to one retailer or a few retailers in a community.
C. Manufacturer direct to jobbers.
He may reach the jobbers either tbru salesmen or by mail.
His goods may be distributed to any desired class of retailers by: 1. All jobbers who will cooperate with him.
2. Selected jobbers having exclusive jobbing agencies in restricted territories.
D. IVIanufacturer direct to special representatives.
He May reach them by salesmen or by mail.
These special representatives may sell to jobbers, retailers or consumers.
They are: 1. Agents.
2. Commission men.
3. Brokers.
5. Exclusive or combined use of trade channels. —Some manufacturers select one of these possible trade channels and send their goods thru it ex clusively. Others combine advantageously several trade channels in their plans of campaign. Some manufacturers, for instance, confine their direct sales to jobbers. Retailers and consumers, regardless of the size of their purchases, cannot obtain goods direct from the factories. The manufacturer who follows this plan desires to obtain the largest possible amount of cooperation from the jobbers by refusing to com pete with them by selling to retailers. Other manu facturers sell both to jobbers and to retailers. Some of this class will sell to any jobber and any retailer; some will sell only to those large retailers who refuse to purchase thru jobbers. There are still other manu facturers who will sell direct to anybody, jobbers, re tailers or consumers. Others ig,nore the jobber and either sell direct only to retailers, or deal with both retailers and consumers.
The possible combinations of trade channels are almost numberless. Whether a manufacturer is to sell thru one or more channels, whether he is to use salesmen or the mails or both, depends partly on cus tom in the trade, partly on the nature of his product, and partly on his ability to see new methods of mar keting, to overcome tradition, and to adapt to his own use all marketing plans that appeal to him as of fering new opportunities for the sale of his goods.
6. Direct sales to consumers.—Where the nature of the product permits direct sales either to consumer or dealers, the manufacturer should consider the ad vantages of dealing direct with consumers by mail, hy salesmen, or by his own retail stores. They are: (1) The manufacturer who deals in any one of these ways knows exactly where his goods are being con sumed, and he can direct his advertising and sales efforts accordingly. (2) He has absolute control of his market; he has no problem of price-cutting, sub stitution or lack of dealer cooperation. An offset to
these advantages is found in (1) the great expense of direct selling in most cases and (2) the antagon ism of dealers.
7. Direct sales to retailers.—When the product is such that it might be sold directly either to retailers or to jobbers, a policy of confining sales to retailers may be dictated by the following considerations: (1) The manufacturer who sells to retailers usually knows where his goods are being consumed. (2) When the manufacturer's salesmen call on the retailers, they may give some of their enthusiasm to the dealers and get them to push the goods energetically. (3) Many retailers will not purchase thru jobbers, and their trade is often important to a manufacturer. (4) If price maintenance is a problem, the manufacturer who deals direct with retailers may sometimes make them his agents, send them his goods on consignment, and thus avoid the legal difficulties of maintaining prices. The manufacturer who sells thru jobbers ordinarily is not in a position to do this. The disadvantages of direct sales to retailers are (1) the cost of maintaining a large selling organization or of extensive dealer advertising, (2) the financial risk involved in assum ing the jobber's function of warehousing and of grant ing credit, and (3) the organized opposition of the j obbers.
8. Direct sales to special representatives.— Agents, commission merchants and brokers are in dependent distributors who stand between the manu facturer or dealer and his primary market. When a manufacturer or dealer elects to distribute his goods thru these special representatives, it is usually be cause he would be at a disadvantage in trying to sell film a sales organization of his own. This disadvan tage might be occasioned by one or more of the follow ing causes: (1) Limited capital; some manufactur ers of textiles sell to commission houses that advance them the money needed to turn out the product. (2) Limited demand ; in a small city the demand for office safes, for instance, is not large enough to justify a manufacturer's representative giving his entire time to local trade. (3) Unfamiliarity with the market ; some manufacturers are specialists in manufacturing only, and having neither time nor money to study the market, they solve their marketing problems by sell ing to brokers. (4) Peculiar organization of the market ; stocks, bonds and produce, for instance, are usually purchased in quantities only thru exchanges or boards of trade, on which trading is confined to mem bers who are commonly called brokers.