Professional Documents
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MULTIPLE CHOICE
1. Amazon.com has begun to pressure manufacturers to use less wasteful packaging because:
a. Thousands of workers are injured each year opening the hard, clear plastic
packaging.
b. The packaging is bad for the environment.
c. With sales of over $35 billion annually, it has to clout to pressure manufacturers.
d. Customers have complained about the use of excessive packaging.
e. Having a large advertising budget.
2. To a channel manager, the elements of the marketing mix do all of the following except:
a. They can inhibit the performance of the marketing channel.
b. They can enhance the performance of the marketing channel.
c. They are tools for securing channel member cooperation.
d. They are viewed as resources for the channel manager.
e. They do not affect the performance of other channel members.
3. The channel manager’s efforts to manage the marketing channels effectively should focus on:
a. Creating synergy among the four components of the marketing mix.
b. Motivating channel managers.
c. Understanding advertising and promotions that attract customers.
d. Developing the firm’s marketing objectives.
e. Using good communication skills with channel members.
4. For the channel manager, the most powerful element of the marketing mix for gaining channel
member cooperation is:
a. Product.
b. Price.
c. Promotion.
d. Logistics.
e. It varies.
ANS: E
10-1
Product Issues in Channel Management
ANS: A
6. Which of the following is a false statement about when a manufacturer is developing new
products and involvement of channel members?
a. Channel members should have experts at the manufacturer’s plant during product
development.
b. Channel members should be consulted to determine whether new products will be
acceptable.
c. Channel members should be asked to react to new product and package prototypes.
d. Channel members should provide feedback during the test-marketing stage.
e. Channel members should be asked for new product ideas.
7. K&B Manufacturing, in developing its new products, must recognize that its intermediaries
will judge the acceptability of the new products based on:
a. The amount of real innovation in the product.
b. The cost of the new product relative to the cost of competitive products.
c. The product’s profit potential in terms of meeting established margin structures.
d. The amount of advertising dollars offered to the intermediaries to support the new
product.
e. The demand by customers.
ANS: C
8. Large supermarkets have selected small food manufacturers to provide natural food items for
their stores because:
a. Customers are demanding products made by small manufacturers.
b. Of the small manufacturer’s credibility.
c. Large supermarkets can exert greater control over small manufacturers.
d. Costs to the supermarkets are lower.
e. Small food manufacturers are offering large incentives.
10-2
Marketing Channels 8e
9. Acceptance of a new product by channel members __________ its acceptance by final users.
a. effectively guarantees
b. is necessary for
c. is unrelated to
d. is dependent upon
e. is unconstrained by
10. Bruce Computer Software, in developing its new products, must recognize that its
intermediaries will be enthusiastic only if the new products:
a. Are highly differentiated.
b. Complement the intermediaries’ current assortment.
c. Are of high quality.
d. Are unique.
e. Offer new opportunities to gain new customers.
ANS: B
11. Consumer product companies launch more than 45,000 products each year. Yet, just over
_______ maintain distribution for more than two years.
a. 40%
b. 25%
c. 39%
d. 5%
e. 10%
12. Channel members judge a product package based on how well it meets their __________
requirements.
a. stock and display
b. size
c. promotion
d. durability
e. recycling
10-3
Product Issues in Channel Management
13. Manufacturers have to exert a lot of effort to gain channel member acceptance of new
products because of all the following except:
a. There are far more new products than shelf space to hold them.
b. Channel members have hard data on product profitability.
c. Shelf space is an asset channel members can “sell” to manufacturers.
d. Channel members want salable items.
e. Manufacturers are experts in identifying what customers want.
ANS: E
14. The particular mix of products carried by a channel member at the wholesale or retail level is
referred to in the text as its:
a. Product line.
b. Product mix.
c. Merchandise mix.
d. Merchandise variety.
e. Assortment.
16. Which of the following was a major problem for Jaguar dealers when Ford introduced the X-
Type Jaguar?
a. Consumers did not like the color options available to them.
b. Not enough of the models were produced so dealers had angry customers.
c. The new technology used in the cars did not perform well.
d. The leather seat coverings did not wear well.
e. Ford was careless about quality, which resulted in higher warranty costs.
17. Which of the following is not a stage of the product life cycle?
a. Decline
b. Maturity
c. Advanced
d. Growth
e. Introduction
10-4
Marketing Channels 8e
18. One of the most critical channel management tasks during the introductory stage of the
product life cycle is to:
a. Obtain adequate market coverage.
b. Emphasize very selective distribution.
c. Emphasize intensive distribution.
d. Keep promotional expenditures to a minimum.
e. Drop slow starting product promptly.
19. During the growth stage of the product life cycle, two overriding issues for channel
management are:
a. Providing for adequate product availability and considering changes in channel
structure.
b. Monitoring competitive products and dropping poorly performing channel
members.
c. Providing heavy promotional support and changing the channel structure.
d. Monitoring competitive products and providing for adequate product availability.
e. Educating channel members and evaluating their performance.
20. During the __________ stage of the product life cycle, manufacturers must be especially
mindful of channel member actions with respect to competitive products.
a. introductory
b. growth
c. maturity
d. decline
e. All stages of the PLC equally.
21. The major strategic emphasis for channel managers to make possible changes to the channel
structure or to select different types of intermediaries occurs in the _______ product life cycle
stage.
a. introduction
b. growth
c. maturity
d. decline
e. stagnation
10-5
Product Issues in Channel Management
22. When the maturity stage of the product life cycle is reached, the sales turnover experienced by
many of the channel members for the product in question is likely to:
a. Increase.
b. Decrease.
c. Remain the same.
d. Increase but at a decreasing rate.
e. Be totally unpredictable.
23. It is fair to say that many retailers have become ___________ about the profitability of the
barrage of new products offered to them.
a. delighted
b. thrilled
c. angry
d. hyperskeptical, even cynical
e. happy and enthusiastic
24. A fundamental but long-term strategic channel management option that should be considered
during the maturity stage of the product life cycle is:
a. An extra trade discount.
b. More advertising allowances.
c. Special package deal discounts.
d. A change in the channel structure.
e. A more liberal returns policy.
25. Special trade deals can keep a channel member attracted to a product in the maturity stage of
the product life cycle, but they may not be in the manufacturer’s long-run interest because:
a. They distract the channel members from the manufacturer’s other products.
b. They can send the wrong message about the product to channel members.
c. They are stopgap measures.
d. They cause channel members to lose interest in carrying the product.
e. They may be considered illegal under antitrust/price fixing legislation.
10-6
Marketing Channels 8e
26. During the decline stage of the product life cycle, it is not unusual to find all of the following
except:
a. Some channel members who still carry the product in question.
b. A high proportion of low volume channel members.
c. Small orders by channel members.
d. High costs of servicing channel members.
e. Increased profit margins.
27. Perhaps the best way for a manufacturer to find out how his products are selling relative to
competitive products is:
a. Through sales analysis.
b. By performing consumer attitude research.
c. By monitoring the flow of products at the point of final sale.
d. By hiring A.C. Nielsen Co. to do television ratings.
e. To develop a consumer panel that is continuously monitored.
ANS: C
10-7
Product Issues in Channel Management
31. The main channel management issue in product line expansion and contraction strategies is:
a. To balance trading up and trading down strategies.
b. Trying to gain channel member support for reshaped product lines.
c. Getting channel members to participate in product design.
d. Convincing the channel members to accept a smaller product line.
e. Speeding up shipments of the new product line so channel members will be able to
sell it faster.
32. Product line expansion and contraction is becoming even more challenging for channel
managers because:
a. Too few new products are being released to support expansion.
b. Power retailers are emphasizing store-by-store category management.
c. The number of private label brands is decreasing.
d. Retailers are requesting the development of new products.
e. There is too much retail shelf space available.
33. When pursuing a trading up or trading down product strategy, the most critical issue a channel
manager must consider whether:
a. Whether existing channel members provide adequate market coverage of the high
or low end of the market.
b. Prices are too high or low for the middle market.
c. There is adequate inventory to serve all of the market.
d. New channel members will be needed to cover the manufacturer’s existing
markets.
e. Speeding up shipments of products will be needed.
34. When Levi Strauss Co. introduced its Levi Strauss Signature brand jeans, it was engaging in
a(n) __________ strategy.
a. trading down
b. trading up
c. expansion
d. contraction
e. high end
10-8
Marketing Channels 8e
35. A manufacturer risks creating its own competition when it adopts a product strategy of:
a. Trading up.
b. National and private brands.
c. “Me-too” products.
d. Category management.
e. Trading down.
36. When dealing with product brand strategy, the most difficult channel management issues arise
in connection with:
a. Selling all products under one national brand.
b. Selling products under several national brands.
c. Selling all products under a private label.
d. Selling products under both national and private brands.
e. Selling all products under generic brands.
10-9
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libraries of Arabic literature, to compile local histories and poems,
and, in a measure, to become centres for the propagation of
intellectual thought.
That is the condition in which Leo Africanus found them in the
sixteenth century, when he first revealed their existence to an
incredulous and largely unlettered Western world; in which the
pioneer explorers of the nineteenth century found them; in which the
political agents of Great Britain found them ten years ago when
destiny drove her to establish her supremacy in the country. That is
the condition in which they are to-day in this difficult transition stage
when the mechanical engines of modern progress, the feverish
economic activity of the Western world, the invading rattle of another
civilization made up of widely differing ideals, modes of thought, and
aims, assailed them.
Will the irresistible might wielded by the new forces be wisely
exercised in the future? Will those who, in the ultimate resort, direct
it, abide by the experience and the advice of the small but splendid
band of men whose herculean and whole-hearted labours have
inscribed on the roll of British history an achievement, not of
conquest, but of constructive statesmanship of just and sober
guidance nowhere exceeded in our management of tropical
dependencies? Will they be brought to understand all that is
excellent and of good repute in this indigenous civilization; to realize
the necessity of preserving its structural foundations, of honouring its
organic institutions, of protecting and strengthening its spiritual
agencies? Will they have the patience to move slowly; the sympathy
to appreciate the period of strain and stress which these
revolutionary influences must bring with them; the perception to
recognize what elements of greatness and of far-reaching promise
this indigenous civilization contains? Or will they, pushed by other
counsellors, incline to go too fast both politically and economically,
impatiently brushing aside immemorial ceremonies and customs, or
permitting them to be assaulted by selfish interests on the one hand
and short-sighted zeal on the other? Will they forget, amid the
clamorous calls of “progress” and “enlightenment” that their own
proclaimed high purpose (nobly accomplished by their
representatives) of staying the ravages of internal warfare and
healing open wounds will be shamed in the result if, through their
instrumentality, the seeds of deeper, deadlier ills are sown which
would eat away this fine material, destroy the lofty courtesies, the
culture and the healthy industrial life of this land, converting its
peoples into a troubled, shiftless mass, hirelings, bereft of economic
independence and having lost all sense of national vitality? Thoughts
such as these must needs crowd upon the traveller through these
vast spaces and populous centres as he watches the iron horse
pursue its irrevocable advance towards the great Hausa cities of the
plains, as he hears the increasing calls from the newly opened tin
mines for labour, from the Lancashire cotton-spinner for cotton and
markets; as he takes cognisance of the suggestions already being
made to break the spirit of the new and admirable land-law, and of
the efforts to introduce a militant Christian propaganda; as he listens
in certain quarters to the loose talk about the “shibboleths” and
“absurdities” of indigenous forms and ceremonies, the
cumbrousness of native laws and etiquette.
CHAPTER IV
THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE—THE LONG-DISTANCE TRADER
A TRADING CARAVAN.
CHAPTER V
THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE—THE AGRICULTURIST
And now a faint amber flush appears in the eastern sky. It is the
signal for many sounds. A hum of many human bees, the crowing of
countless roosters, the barking of lean and yellow “pye” dogs, the
braying of the donkey and the neigh of his nobler relative, the
bleating of sheep and the lowing of cattle. The scent of burning wood
assails the nostrils with redolent perfume. The white tick-birds, which
have passed the night close-packed on the fronds of the tall fan-
palms, rustle their feathers and prepare, in company with their
scraggy-necked scavenging colleagues the vultures, for the useful if
unedifying business of the day. Nigerian life begins, and what a busy
intensive life it is! From sunrise to sunset, save for a couple of hours
in the heat of the day, every one appears to have his hands full.
Soon all will be at work. The men driving the animals to pasture, or
hoeing in the fields, or busy at the forge, or dye-pit or loom; or
making ready to sally forth to the nearest market with the products of
the local industry. The women cooking the breakfast, or picking or
spinning cotton, or attending to the younger children, or pounding
corn in large and solid wooden mortars, pulping the grain with
pestles—long staves, clubbed at either end—grasped now in one
hand, now in the other, the whole body swinging with the stroke as it
descends, and, perhaps, a baby at the back, swinging with it; or
separating on flat slabs of stone the seed from the cotton lint picked
the previous day. This is a people of agriculturists, for among them
agriculture is at once life’s necessity and its most important
occupation. The sowing and reaping, and the intermediate seasons
bring with them their several tasks. The ground must be cleared and
hoed, and the sowing of the staple crops concluded before the early
rains in May, which will cover the land with a sheet of tender green
shoots of guinea-corn, maize, and millet, and, more rarely, wheat.
When these crops have ripened, the heads of the grain will be cut
off, the bulk of them either marketed or stored—spread out upon the
thatch-roofed houses to dry, sometimes piled up in a huge circle
upon a cleared, dry space—in granaries of clay or thatch, according
to the local idea; others set aside for next year’s seeds. The stalks,
ten to fifteen feet in height, will be carefully gathered and stacked for
fencing purposes. Nothing that nature provides or man produces is
wasted in this country. Nature is, in general, kind. It has blessed man
with a generally fertile and rapidly recuperative soil, provided also
that in the more barren, mountainous regions, where ordinary
processes would be insufficient, millions of earth-worms shall
annually fling their casts of virgin sub-soil upon the sun-baked
surface. And man himself, in perennial contact with Nature, has
learned to read and retain many of her secrets which his civilized
brother has forgotten. One tree grows gourds with neck and all
complete, which need but to be plucked, emptied and dried to make
first-rate water-bottles. A vigorous ground creeper yields enormous
pumpkin-shaped fruit whose contents afford a succulent potage,
while its thick shell scraped and dried furnishes plates, bowls, pots,
and dishes of every size, and put to a hundred uses: ornaments, too,
when man has grafted his art upon its surface with dyes and carved
patterns. A bush yields a substantial pod which when ready to burst
and scatter its seeds is found to contain a fibrous substance which
resembles—and may be identical with, I am not botanist enough to
tell—the loofah of commerce, and is put to the same uses. From the
seeds of the beautiful locust-bean tree (dorowa), whose gorgeous
crimson blooms form so notable a feature of the scenery in the
flowering season, soup is made, while the casing of the bean affords
a singularly enduring varnish. The fruit of the invaluable Kadenia or
shea tree is used for food, for oil, and medicinally. The bees receive
particular attention for their honey and their wax, the latter utilized in
sundry ways from ornamenting Korans down to the manufacture of
candles. As many as a dozen oblong, mud-lined, wicker hives closed
at one end, the other having a small aperture, may sometimes be
seen in a single tree. Before harvest time has dawned and with the
harvesting, the secondary crops come in for attention. Cassava and
cotton, indigo and sugar-cane, sweet potatoes and tobacco, onions
and ground-nuts, beans and pepper, yams and rice, according to the
locality and suitability of the soil. The farmers of a moist district will
concentrate on the sugar-cane—its silvery, tufted, feathery crowns
waving in the breeze are always a delight: of a dry, on ground-nuts:
those enjoying a rich loam on cotton, and so on. While the staple
crops represent the imperious necessity of life—food, the profits from
the secondary crops are expended in the purchase of clothing, salt
and tools, the payment of taxes, the entertainment of friends and
chance acquaintances (a generous hospitality characterizes this
patriarchal society), and the purchase of luxuries, kolas, tobacco,
ornaments for wives and children. It is a revelation to see the cotton-
fields, the plants in raised rows three feet apart, the land having in
many cases been precedently enriched by a catch-crop of beans,
whose withering stems (where not removed for fodder, or hoed in as
manure) are observable between the healthy shrubs, often four or
five feet in height, thickly covered with yellow flowers or snowy bolls
of white, bursting from the split pod. The fields themselves are
protected from incursions of sheep and goats by tall neat fencing of
guinea-corn stalks, or reeds, kept in place by native rope of
uncommon strength. Many cassava fields, the root of this plant
furnishing an invaluable diet, being indeed, one of the staples of the
more southerly regions, are similarly fenced. Equally astonishing are
the irrigated farms which you meet with on the banks of the water-
courses. The plots are marked out with the mathematical precision of
squares on a chess-board, divided by ridges with frequent gaps
permitting of a free influx of water from the central channel, at the
opening of which, fixed in a raised platform, a long pole with a
calabash tied on the end of it, is lowered into the water and its
contents afterwards poured into the trench. Conditions differ of
course according to locality, and the technique and industry
displayed by the farmers of one district vary a good deal from the
next. In the northern part of Zaria and in Kano the science of
agriculture has attained remarkable development. There is little we
can teach the Kano farmer. There is much we can learn from him.
Rotation of crops and green manuring are thoroughly understood,
and I have frequently noticed in the neighbourhood of some village
small heaps of ashes and dry animal manure deposited at intervals
along the crest of cultivated ridges which the rains will presently
wash into the waiting earth. In fact, every scrap of fertilizing
substance is husbanded by this expert and industrious agricultural
people. Instead of wasting money with the deluded notion of
“teaching modern methods” to the Northern Nigerian farmer, we
should be better employed in endeavouring to find an answer to the
puzzling question of how it is that land which for centuries has been
yielding enormous crops of grain, which in the spring is one carpet of
green, and in November one huge cornfield “white unto harvest,” can
continue doing so. What is wanted is an expert agriculturist who will
start out not to teach but to learn; who will study for a period of say
five years the highly complicated and scientific methods of native
agriculture, and base possible improvements and suggestions,
maybe, for labour-saving appliances, upon real knowledge.
Kano is, of course, the most fertile province of the Protectorate,
but this general description of agricultural Nigeria does not only
apply to Kano Province. I saw nothing finer in the way of deep
cultivation (for yams and guinea-corn chiefly) than among the Bauchi
pagans. The pagan Gwarri of the Niger Province have for ages past
grown abundant crops in terraces up their mountainsides whither
they sought refuge from Hausa and Fulani raids. The soil around
Sokoto, where the advancing Sahara trenches upon the fertile belt,
may look arid and incapable of sustaining annual crops, yet every
year it blossoms like a rose. But the result means and needs
inherited lore and sustained and strenuous labour. From the early
rains until harvest time a prolific weed-growth has continuously to be
fought. Insect pests, though not conspicuously numerous in most
years, nevertheless exist, amongst them the locusts, which
sometimes cover the heavens with their flight; the caterpillar, which
eats the corn in its early youth; the blight (daraba), which attacks the
ripening ear. In some districts not so favoured, the soil being of
compact clay with a thin coating of humus, intensive cultivation has
proved exhausting, and it is a study to note how every ounce of
humus is tended with religious care. Very hard work at the right time
is the secret of success for the Nigerian agriculturist. It is little short
of marvellous that with all he has to do he somehow manages to
build our railways and our roads. Indeed, if that phenomenon has in
many respects its satisfactory, it has also its sombre, social side.
One can but hope that the former may outweigh the latter as the
country gradually settles down after the severe demands placed
upon it these last few years.
A GWARRI GIRL.
A HAUSA TRADING WOMAN.