DISTRIBUTION
CORRECT buying and the most efficient methods of manufacture play a
large part in the successful carrying on of a business, but the most
important consideration is the successful marketing or distributing of
the product after it has been manufactured or bought. Very few products
are so superior in quality that they sell themselves purely on merit.
Competition in business to-day is so keen that, in order to find a
market for his product, a merchant must create a demand for it. Thus at
its very foundation, distribution is merely a process of creating a
demand and then filling that demand. For instance, the retail merchant
is concerned with bringing the customers to his store rather than to his
competitor's across the street. The wholesale merchant is concerned with
having the retailers handle his goods rather than those of another firm.
The mail order merchant is concerned with getting the farmer's business
before some other dealer gets it. The salesman is concerned with writing
the order before a rival from another house writes it.
In the first place, the merchant must handle those things that his
customers consider necessary or desirable. Overcoats cannot be sold in
August, ashsifters on the equator, nor electric fans in Iceland.
Different peoples, different times, and different conditions create
different demands, and it is the merchant's business to study those
demands and to fill them. In the second place, he must leave no stone
unturned in endeavoring to make his product more desirable than that of
his competitors. This may mean extensive advertising campaigns,
expensive displays, outlay for costly catalogues and booklets, the
expenditure of money for inducements to bring customers, or the hiring
of expert salesmen. In fact, thousands of plans are carried out every
year in this endeavor to increase trade.
The getting of new and additional business, however, is only one of the
important considerations that the merchant must always have in mind. He
must also keep what business he already has by maintaining the standard
of his goods and by giving his customers satisfactory service. One of
the first essentials in this question of service is promptness and
exactness of delivery. In this the merchant must depend very largely on
the transportation companies, and therefore a brief study of these
facilities will be especially in place at this point.
Transportation
Transportation is an essential item in the problem of distribution. If
you wished to drink a cup of coffee and found that none could be had
except in Brazil, you would begin to realize how much the steamship
company and the railroad company have done in transporting and hauling
it where you might buy it. The same is true of our oranges from
California and Florida, our apples from Washington and Oregon, and our
grain from the Middle States. In fact, in the case of many products the
most important item is not growing them, but bringing them to market,
since the transportation charges are often much greater than the actual
cost of producing. Thousands of barrels of apples rot on the ground
every year because their quality does not warrant the high
transportation charges, the lack of transportation rendering them
useless. In a smaller measure, the delivery wagons in our cities and
towns are essential to us because they save us the trouble of carrying
our purchases about. Thus, the element of transportation enters into our
lives every day, saving us inconvenience, bringing to us necessities
that we demand and luxuries that we like, and, at the same time,
increasing the price of commodities.
Common carriers, as transportation companies are called, are of two
general classes: