Not business as usual: Changing channels in consumer electronics, found that with strong revenue, tightening margins and increasingly overlapping markets, CE manufacturers now more than ever need to know who their consumer is.

According to authors of the report, Christian Seider, Senior Managing Consultant, IBM Institute for Business Value and Sean Lafferty, IBM's Global Leader for Growth and Innovation: "We believe that CE manufacturers need to quickly learn more about their end  consumers, and rethink their channel strategy mix to best reach their target CE customers, all without alienating existing retail channel relationships".

They found CE manufacturers need to take specific actions to deal with the changing sales landscape today.
Among the tactics identified were leveraging new sales channels and managing channel conflicts, tightening collaboration with retail partners  and dealing with competition from retailers.

Other important approaches in the new market the report discusses are achieving a globally integrated business, aligning brand and channel strategy and understanding customer wants and needs to deliver effective solutions.

It said while there is no "one-size-fits-all" approach when determining the right actions, to avoid costly and difficult to correct mistakes, a detailed channel strategy for products is vital – one that identifies each channel partner, along with ways to manage them.

Being able to answer the following questins for each consumer product  and solution is critical:

What is the geographical market size for each of your solutions?
What are your detailed sales expectations by customer segment and product?
How much control does each channel partner exert over each sales channel?
How much power does the manufacturer have in each channel?
What impact does competition have on each sales channel?

Once these questions can be answered, the channel strategy can then be developed around them.

A full copy of the report can be obtained from http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/ibvstudy/gbs/ a1026329