At a superficial glance, one might be executed for thinking that the retailer has no cause for compliment, since the manufacturer, in the circumstances described, does the selling job for him! This might be so if each retailer had a monopoly in a given consumer area. But this is not so, and a retail shop [...]

For most part the manufacturing function is divorced from that retailing. There are few important examples of such vertical integration (that is, where a manufacturer runs or controls other links in the supply chain, either integrating “upwards” towards his raw materials or integrating “downwards” towards the retail outlets) but in most instances, like a famous [...]

This article is bundled from previous Distribution and Selling article. Pre-selling, and the directness of communication between manufacturer and consumer, has certainly changed the traditional role of the retailer, and indeed of the wholesaler too, in a great number of products. This process is still incomplete, and great changes are still taking places, but one [...]