Transforming Your Go-to-Market Strategy: The Three Disciplines of Channel Management

Most distribution channels are outdated and unwieldy, serving neither customers nor channel partners adequately. Despite new technologies that have streamlined many transactions and processes, a general lack of leadership combined with flawed and deeply ingrained structures make distribution channels exceedingly difficult to change. What companies need, says V. Kasturi Rangan, is a new approach to going to market--channel stewardship--that simultaneously addresses customers' best interests and drives profits for all channel partners. In Transforming Your Go-to-Market Strategy, Rangan shows how any member of a distribution channel can adopt this role and learn how to shape an effective, constantly evolving, and mutually beneficial channel strategy. This book outlines three disciplines that companies must master to navigate the complex distribution environment successfully: map the industry channel, build and edit one's own channel continuously to best serve customers, and align and influence one's channel value chain to ensure that all parties reap appropriate rewards. Rangan also provides guidance on managing multiple channels, integrating the Internet into a channel strategy, and overcoming common barriers that impede transformation. A fresh approach to designing and managing channels for the long term, this book helps firms expand value for customers, partners, and the bottom line.

About the Authors

V. Kasturi (Kash) Rangan is the Malcolm P. McNair Professor of Marketing at the Harvard Business School. He has an engineering degree from I.I.T (Madras), a business degree from I.I.M (Ahmedabad), and a doctorate from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Professor Rangan's business marketing and channels research has appeared in management journals such as the Journal of Marketing, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Journal of Retailing, Management Science, Marketing Science, and Organization Science. Rangan has authored such books as Going to Market, which deals with distribution systems for industrial products (coauthored with E. Raymond Corey and Frank V. Cespedes), and Business Marketing Strategy, which presents approaches for managing industrial products and markets over their life cycle (coauthored with Benson P. Shapiro and Rowland T. Moriarty). Rangan currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Retailing and the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing. He has also served on the editorial board of the Journal of Marketing. His most recent research on "channel stewardship," presented in this book, advances concepts and methods by which firms may transform their go-to-market strategy. Rangan is also actively involved in studying the role of businesses, nonprofits, and NGOs in addressing the needs and wants of lower-income consumers. He has written a number of case studies and articles on the topic and serves as one of the founding cochairs of the Social Enterprise Initiative at Harvard, whose faculty study and teach the challenges of nonprofit management. Prior to moving to the United States, Rangan held several sales and marketing positions for a large multinational company in India. He has been on the faculty of the Harvard Business School since 1983 and lives in the Boston area.

Marie Bell has been a Research Associate at the Harvard Business School since 1993, where she has contributed to the development of more than twenty cases. She has also worked extensively in the hospitality and executive education sectors. She received her MBA from Harvard Business School in 1989 and also resides in the Boston area.