Why Do We Buy the Same Bottle of Water... from Different Channels?
Last week, while teaching a Channel Marketing class, I held up a bottle of water and asked my students a simple question.
"Who has ever bought water from 7-Eleven?"
Almost every hand went up.
Then I asked...
• Lotus's?
• Big C?
• Makro?
• Grab?
Again, many hands.
Then I asked the real question.
"Why can exactly the same bottle of water be sold successfully through so many different channels?"
Let's think about it.
Imagine you're extremely thirsty.
Would you...
Buy a bottle of water at the nearby convenience store for 10 Baht?
Or drive 3 kilometers to another supermarket because it's on promotion for 8 Baht?
Most of us already know the answer.
We pay the extra 2 Baht.
Not because we want water.
Because we want convenience.
Now imagine it's the weekend.
You're shopping for groceries.
You walk past the bottled water aisle.
Suddenly...
You're calculating unit prices like a finance analyst.
"How much per bottle?"
"Should I buy a full case?"
"If I buy one more, do I qualify for the promotion?"
You happily load an entire case into your shopping cart.
This time...
You weren't buying convenience.
You were buying value.
Now imagine you're running a restaurant.
You don't buy one bottle.
You buy dozens of cases.
Your question isn't:
"Is this convenient?"
It's:
"What's my cost per bottle?"
Because what you're really buying isn't water.
You're buying profit.
One more scenario.
It's raining.
You're stuck in an online meeting.
(Or perhaps... you're "in a meeting" while secretly playing a game. 😄)
You order lunch through Grab.
Then you add one bottle of water.
You know it's more expensive.
You buy it anyway.
Because what you're really purchased wasn't water.
It was time.
The product never changed.
Same bottle.
Same brand.
Same taste.
Only one thing changed.
The value the customer wanted at that particular moment.
This is one of the most important lessons in Strategic Channel Marketing.
Customers don't simply buy products.
They buy the value those products deliver in different situations.
The same customer may purchase through multiple channels throughout the week:
🏪 Convenience Store (7-Eleven, CJ MORE)
When speed matters.
🥬 Supermarket (Tops, Foodland)
When shopping for the household.
📦 Wholesale (Makro, Go Wholesale)
When running a business.
📱 Quick Commerce (Grab, LINE MAN)
When time is more valuable than money.
No channel is inherently better than another.
Each channel is designed to solve a different customer problem.
This changes how we should think about channels.
A channel isn't simply a place to sell products.
A channel is a vehicle for delivering different types of customer value.
That is the foundation of Strategic Channel Marketing.
A Real Business Question
Here's a question I often give my students.
Imagine you're an FMCG company.
Your products have been sold successfully for years through supermarkets, hypermarkets, wholesale stores, and e-commerce.
But you've never entered the convenience store channel.
Now you finally have the opportunity.
Would you:
✅ Launch exactly the same product?
Or...
✅ Design a product specifically for the convenience store channel?
Many people answer immediately.
"Just use the same product."
That sounds reasonable.
But the answer may surprise you.
In my next post, I'll explain why the same product should not always be sold the same way across every channel—and why successful companies often redesign products specifically for different retail channels.
I recently started writing these articles alongside teaching and conducting research. I hope they help bridge academic concepts with real business practice.
I'd love to hear your thoughts:
Have you ever paid more for the exact same product simply because the channel delivered greater value?
#StrategicChannelMarketing #ChannelMarketing #RetailStrategy #ConsumerBehavior #CustomerValue #FMCG #ModernTrade #ConvenienceStore #RetailInnovation #BusinessStrategy #GoToMarket
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น