- Customer characteristics – This include type of customer, geographic dispersion of buyers i.e. location to manufacturers, customer buying habits and the outlets they purchase from.
- Product characteristics – This includes perishability, product usage (industrial-direct or household-indirect).
- Company characteristics – This includes company objectives, financial status, past channel experiences and the desired degree of channel control.
- Middle men characteristics – This includes financial status, storage capacity, availability and the services they offer.
- Competitive characteristics – For some products, it is preferable to use the channels that are used by other competitors e.g. fast moving consumer goods.
- Environmental characteristics – This includes economic, political, legal, social, cultural and technological factors that may affect the channel selection.
- Nature of the goods i.e. heavy, bulky etc
- The number of terminals
- Transportation cost
- The distance to be covered i.e. water and airs are mainly used for long distance products.
- Speed and urgency of the goods.
- The packaging requirements
- Availability of the channel
- Flexibility of the channel to be used i.e. can it be used in the interior regions?
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