TITLE: Role of physical distribution in marketing strategy

SUMMARY:
The case provides a broad perspective on how physical
distribution is used to benefit the marketing strategy of cut
flower market in USA. Flowers have limited shelf life so they
need to reach customers within short time to maintain quality.
Californian growers develop a special container which prevents
deterioration and was easy to handle, which helps to improve
the supply chain
The traditional marketing channels like flower shops cannot
attract enough customers. Hence, Growers decided to mass
market through department stores and food chain, they also seek
further opportunities to induce the public to buy more & often.
Efforts were taken to bring down unit price by packaging in
smaller bundles, which makes cut flowers more affordable
Merchandising unit was designed to efficiently utilize the floor
space and have an impact on customer. As flowers being an
impulse purchase, likely to happen at the end of shopping.
Growers insisted shops to place the merchandise unit at
checkout counters. These measure helps to improve profitability
of cut flower companies
LEVELS
Pre-structural: physical distribution practices add-on to
marketing strategies of any company, growers of cut flower
market uses many tactics to increase market share
Uni-structural: conventional marketing channels cannot
attracts enough customers
Multi-structural- growers adopt new containers, increased
shelf life, brought down unit price, found new marketing
channels
Relational: focused on increasing demand through new
marketing channels, reduced unit price to make affordable,
designed new marchendise to attract customeers, placing
marchrndise unit at checkout counters as flowers are impulse
purchase
Extended abstract/critical thinking; conduct research on
buying behaviour, understanding aesthetics of buying a cut
flower in the target market, use of promotional strategies to
increase market share
Answer to the question
Mumbai debbawalas is a very good example on how physical
distribution can be make used to effective marketing.
Debbawalas are a group of people operating on tiffin delivery
service in and around Mumbai city. These people delivers meals
to the customers using local trains, crates and bicycles.
Everyday some 200000 dabbas are moved by an estimated 5000
dabbawalas. it is not simple as thought, they uses alpha numeric
code to identifies the destination. what is even more interesting
is that most of the dabbwalas are illiterate, yet they achieve six
sigma in their operation which means they make only 1 mistake
in every 6 million deliveries. Through employing illiterate
people and local public transport they managed to reduce the
operation cost of each dabba, due to this low price dabbas are
more affordable and become very popular in the city as well as
around the world for their efficient supply chain system
Conclusion
Physical distribution is the set of activities concerned with
efficient movement of finished goods from the end of the
production operation to the consumer. In this case we can
conclude that physical distribution and marketing strategies tend
to inter-relate in many ways. Efficient physical distribution is
always gives marketing firm an upper hand over the
competitors, it also helps to reduce cost and time. Cut flower
growers renovate their physical distribution in order to reach
more customers and increase their profitability