Established model
Distribution intensity
Established in marketing channel theory · 1960s
Three settings for how widely to sell: everywhere possible, through a chosen few, or through one.
Its place in the frameworkMarket Core›Sales Channels
What it does
Intensive distribution maximises availability and surrenders control over how the product is presented and priced. Exclusive distribution buys commitment and margin at the cost of reach. Selective sits between. The choice is not a channel preference but a strategic one, and it has to agree with the brand’s positioning or one of the two is lying.
- Reach for it when
- When adding a channel, and particularly when a marketplace or discounter is being added to a brand sold as premium.
- Where it stops
- It was formulated for physical goods and physical shelves. Online, availability is nearly free and the control problem takes a different form.
Standard in marketing channel theory; see Louis W. Stern & Adel I. El-Ansary, Marketing Channels, Prentice Hall, 1977.
Why it sits at Sales Channels
How the transaction actually happens: which routes to market are used, where they collide, what each needs in order to sell, and which of them earns its cost.
A model is only useful when you reach for it at the right moment. This one answers a question that arises here — so it is filed here, and nowhere else. These are the working areas it serves:
- Route to marketDistribution-channel theory on the trade between coverage and control, and on channel length.
- Channel conflictThe channel-conflict literature on horizontal and vertical conflict, and on segmentation as the standard remedy.
- EnablementSales-enablement practice, and the finding that indirect channels sell what they can explain rather than what earns them most.
- Channel performanceChannel profitability analysis, with cost to serve applied per route rather than averaged.
What it touches elsewhere
Nothing in a business is decided on its own. A conclusion reached with this model at Sales Channels lands in these other cores, whether or not anyone follows it there.
- Business CorePartners as a relationship are managed there; this object covers their role as a route to market.
- MonetisationChannel margin comes out of the same price, and a route’s cost belongs in the margin structure.
- Brand CoreAn indirect route presents the brand on your behalf, usually with material you did not write.
- Omni CoreThe customer experiences one organisation regardless of which route sold to them.
Filed at the same place
These answer questions that arise at Sales Channels too. Where they disagree with this one, the disagreement is the useful part.
- SPIN sellingIn large sales, the questions that work are about situation, problem, implication and need-payoff — in that order.
Elsewhere in Market Core
- PESTEL analysis
- SWOT analysis
- TAM, SAM and SOM
- The five forces
- Strategic group mapping
- Blue Ocean Strategy
- Segmentation, targeting, positioning
- Personas
- AIDA
- The consumer decision journey
- See, think, do, care
- The marketing mix
- Marketing mix modelling
- The content marketing matrix
- STEPPS
- The 70:20:10 content mix
- The product life cycle
- Disruptive innovation
These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.
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