This best-selling text has a new look and a new author helping to keep this classic at the leading edge of Channels research. Using examples taken from all over the world, this text shows students how to design, develop, and maintain effective relationships among channel members to achieve sustainable competitive advantage by using both strategic and managerial frames of reference. It emphasizes strategies for planning, organizing, and controlling the alliances among the institutions, agencies, and in-house units that bring products and services to market. The text focuses on the way in which marketing channels can provide customer service—both for the end-users they serve and the organizations that comprise them.