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Siebel Consumer Sector Guide > Product Distribution > About Controlling Product Distribution >
About Distribution Lists
Most consumer goods companies are organized in a hierarchical structure, often based on the company's channels of distribution. Typically, marketing administrators create product distribution lists that control which of their company's products are available for distribution to their customer distributor accounts and the retail outlets they serve.
The Siebel Consumer Sector applications can use distribution codes to automatically create an account-product record, which is a distribution list of the products each account (within the product distribution account hierarchy) is authorized to receive. Distribution codes can be applied to the appropriate level of the product distribution account hierarchy for each of your customers, usually to the customer's distribution centers and to the outlets they serve, and to any or all of the products that your company manufactures. Each subaccount receives either the full set or a subset of products authorized for the key distributor accounts directly above that subaccount in the hierarchy.
Most consumer goods companies use one or both of the following distribution methods to supply their retail outlets:
- Direct distribution. With this distribution method, the key account, usually the customer's own distribution center, is the sole intermediary between your company and the retail outlets.
- Indirect distribution. With this distribution method, there is another intermediary such as a third-party distributor, called an indirect account, between the key account and the retail outlets.
Your company's products are authorized for retail distribution at the key account, indirect account, and retail outlet levels. This is called retail product authorization. With indirect distribution, distribution lists are built from the products available to the indirect account, which form a subset of the products from the key account distribution list.
For more information on creating distribution lists to control product distribution to accounts, see Creating and Modifying Distribution Lists.
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Siebel Consumer Sector Guide Published: 18 April 2003 |