Intermediaries Essay, Research Paper

Intermediaries

Market intermediaries are an important factor in the way that products and services are distributed today. Marketing intermediaries are organizations that assist in moving goods and services from producers to industrial and consumer users. They re called intermediaries because they re organizations in the middle of a whole series of organizations that join together to help distribute goods from producers to consumers. Marketing intermediaries have always been viewed by the public with some suspicion. People reason that if we could only get rid of intermediaries, we could greatly reduce the cost of everything we buy. Well the lets imagine for a minute that we have eliminated intermediaries and have to go shopping for groceries and shoes.

First of all you would have to find out exactly where the products you need are manufactured or where there nearest wholesaler is. The easiest way to do this would either be call the company or check it out on the Internet. Once you have acquired the location of your products you need to transport yourself there, most of the time that means driving. So now imagine for groceries you need Lucky Charms cereal and Golden Guernsey milk and for shoes you want the new Air Jordan s from Nike. You ve found that your milk is in your town, your cereal is in Milwaukee and your shoes are found near Chicago. So you drive the couple minutes to the get the milk then you drive a little over two hours to get to the cereal in Milwaukee. Then you drive another two hours to get your shoes; lastly you drive another three hours to get back home. Now is all that gas, time, and effort really worth it? No, of course not because you just spent more money on gas getting to your product then you would have if the producer had just paid an intermediary to bring the product to your town. Although the price of a product does go up when an intermediary is involved it actually saves you the consumer time, money, and effort. Think about it not only are you using all that money on gas, but the trip takes so long that you probably need to take off of work to make it so you lose a days pay. Also with all the driving you are doing you take the risk of getting into an automobile accident which could cost you more money. Intermediaries are a big part of the distribution of products or services but to me none of them are more important than the other. This is because they all some how or another may rely on one another in a channel of distribution. A channel of distribution consists of marketing intermediaries, such as wholesalers and retailers, who join together to transport and store goods in their path from producers to consumers.

The development of the Internet has also changed the way that products are being distributed to consumers. The Internet drops the price of products because they eliminate most intermediaries and are not taxed. This would be a great system and I believe it would be used more if it was safer and quicker. If you order over the Internet you have to wait at least a day to get it but what if a person needs that product that day, also to purchase something on the Internet the consumer needs to use his or her credit card number. With the safety of information on the Internet becoming a big problem now days most people are scared to release that kind of information lowering the purchases of products over the web. However there are some advantages to using the Internet to purchase goods and services. The variety of products offered on the Internet is one of the major advantages of using the Internet to purchase products also as I already mentioned the lowered cost because there is no tax nor are there so many intermediaries. Technology is improving and I believe that soon the Internet will become one of the major ways to buy and sell goods in the world.