1. Sultan Qaboos University
College of Economics and Political Science
Marketing Department
Marketing Channels (MRKT 3634)
Fall 2014
Assignment 4
Channel Issues (Synergy)
Submitted by:
Halima Mubarak Al Kalbani
ID#: 92558
On:
25/11/2014

2. Channel Synergy:
The emergent of online retailer stores like Amazon.com have raised the question of whether
those online retailers need to add a traditional retail stores along with their channel strategy or
not or is it going to add some sort of advantages when synergy among channels is accomplished.
In my opinion, the answer will be depending on the company’s strategy, target market,
distribution objectives, channel position, design and policies plus every firm has to pay attention
to their channel members and the fast changes in technology. However, for an online retailer like
Amazon.com that was founded two decades ago with a single online channel as their business
model and still they are one of the successful retailers with a sales of 74.45B$ for the year of
2013. In addition, Amazon.com has truly succeeded in meeting the demand of their target market
better than competitors. However, multiple channel strategy can carry a mix of challenges and
opportunities, especially with building synergy among the channel members. Combining
physical and online stores with a true synergy; have many advantages. Those advantages are; the
firm will have the choice to offer variety of products to clients, redaction on the physical space
acquired in the shop shelves or stores, increase brand image & customer awareness and as
Fernando Aparicio mentioned in the Amvos website “Access to a larger number of potential
customers. In a world where it is expected that e-commerce transactions to be conducted worth
of 323,000 million Dollars in 2020, is there still anyone planning to add the benefits of an online
channel to the usual offline channel?” (Aparicio, 2014). On the other hand, there are many
disadvantages; in multichannel system the dilemma of price policy sitting always arises and the
level of setting promotions and discounts will vary among the channels plus in online channels.
In conclusion, the answer of such a question will always depend on the internal and external
effects on which any company operates.

3. .
List of References
Aparicio, F. (2014, January 29, Wednesday). advantages-disadvantages-multi-channel-sales. Retrieved
11 24, 2014, from Amvos: http://www.amvos.com/en/blog/2014/01/29/advantages-
disadvantages-multi-channel-sales/
Rosenbloom, B. (2013). Marketin Channels A Managment view. Canada: South Western : Drexel
Universty.