Wholesaling

Ways to Categorize Wholesalers

In the Retailing Tutorial we showed how retailers can be categorized using different operational characteristics.  Wholesalers can likewise be grouped together, though the characteristics are slightly different. 

For our purposes we will separate wholesale operations based on four marketing decisions:

• products carried
• promotional activities
• distribution method
• service level

and one legal factor:

• product ownership

As we discussed with our retailer categorization, these grouping schemes are not meant to be mutually exclusive.  Consequently, a wholesaler can be evaluated on each characteristic.