What you'll learn

Skills you'll gain

Specialization - 4 course series

New sources of value, outside of the traditional product and service offering, are identified that better accommodate and ultimately optimize "how the customer wants to buy." Strategies for improving purchase convenience, service offerings, and information at the right place and time across omnichannel settings are identified and critiqued.

This course will introduce you to the concept of channel benefits, which focuses on HOW customers want to buy. This is a critical first step and represents the demand side of designing routes to markets. You will learn which channel benefits are most commonly desired by customers. Finally, you will gain frameworks for how to quantify and tradeoff these benefits so as to create a range of strategic options.

This course will cover the concept of channel functions, or the supply side of designing routes to markets. Channel functions are the necessary activities that channel members must provide in order to create the channel benefits that customers desire. You will learn a framework that quantifies channel functions and ultimately, how to use them as the basis for determining channel member work loads and compensation. A final exercise considers how to monetize shipping benefits and align the channel benefits demanded with the necessary supply side activities.

In this course, you will be exposed to the challenges of implementing a pricing strategy in your route-to-market and the necessity of becoming a "strategic skeptic." Questions such as, "how to ensure our partners do the right activity at the right price?" "how should my firm protect itself from channel partners who seek to cheat or free ride?" will be answered. You will also be exposed to direct selling channels, their incentive structures, and understand how and when they might represent a viable route-to-market.

In this course you will gain a framework for analyzing how much warmth/friendship/socialization is needed for a range of business relationship types. You will also be introduced to the benefits and drawbacks of distributing on Amazon and other third party platforms in which third party resellers are present. You will be exposed to new platforms for B2B exchange via a guest speakers' presentation of a startup called Inxeption. Finally, you will be exposed to how multichannel routes to market can create superior value for downstream customers.

Marketing Channel Functions

Marketing Channel Incentives

Marketing Channel Governance