Managing the Squeeze

Managing the Squeeze is a book intended for all levels of management that use channel intermediaries for distribution or who function as channel intermediaries. The book teaches successful strategies for distributors, wholesalers, other intermediaries and those who use these services. The forgotten middlemen and their important place in the value chain are finally brought to center stage in this practical solution-oriented guide to managing the squeeze between producer and consumer. The merchants in the middle are not often the focus of scholarly business research. However, in this volume, four experience and well-respected professors of strategic management, marketing, and distribution management share their combined 60+ years of accumulated insights into the best practices of highly effective distributors and wholesalers in some of the world s toughest industries. The book is not only aimed at helping frontline business managers in making sense of the middleman s role, the authors also hope to kick-start a more serious on-going debate in academic marketing research circles into the role of middlemen as a vital link in the manufacturing value chain. This book offers readers a deeper appreciation of the difficult strategic dilemma faced by the middlemen when squeezed by evolving customer needs, fierce competition and the pressure imposed by suppliers. The book teaches how to envision new winning-strategies, especially in times of adversity.