Essays

?A: Channel stewardship is a brand new concept. Bits and pieces have been practiced in the past, but we have pulled it all together and added some new ones. It would be hard to identify any one firm as an all-around exemplar, but many companies do the different disciplines very well. Cisco Systems and Dell would jump out as excellent on certain dimensions; but not so big and visible companies like Haworth Office Furniture, too, have an excellent record on some stewardship components.

A channel steward need not be a thousand-pound gorilla and market leader. A number of smaller players are good at it, like Haworth and Atlas Copco. Distributors and retailers could be channel stewards too. Wal-Mart, Best Buy (consumer electronics), and HEB (supermarkets) are all discussed in the book.

Q: You point to the auto industry as one example of how a lack of stewardship has created a rotten customer experience as well as major financial troubles for some large players. What does Toyota understand about its channels that GM is still learning?

A: We didn't specifically focus on Toyota's channel strategy in the study, but we know that each Toyota dealer sells an average of over 1,000 cars per year as compared to, say, the Chevrolet division of GM, which has an average much less than 1,000. Moreover, the Japanese company has about 1,500 distributorships in the United States; Chevrolet has about four times that number.

A: Channel stewardship is a brand new concept. Bits and pieces have been practiced in the past, but we have pulled it all together and added some new ones. It would be hard to identify any one firm as an all-around exemplar, but many companies do the different disciplines very well. Cisco Systems