Direct Marketing, Indirect Profits: A Strategic Analysis of Dual-Channel Supply-Chain Design

The advent of e-commerce has prompted many manufacturers to redesign their traditional channel structures by engaging in direct sales. The model conceptualizes the impact of customer acceptance of a direct channel, the degree to which customers accept a direct channel as a substitute for shopping at a traditional store, on supply-chain design. The customer acceptance of a direct channel can be strong enough that an indepent manufacturer would open a direct channel to compete with its own retailers. Here, direct marketing is used for strategic channel control purposes even though it is inefficient on its own and, surprisingly, it can profit the manufacturer even when so direct sales occur. Specifically, we…