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Article: Industry corner: industrial distribution, survival of the smartest. (application of information technology on the industrial distribution industry)
- Article from:
- Business Economics
- Article date:
- October 1, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 The National Association for Business Economists. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Industrial distribution, defined here as equivalent to durable-goods distribution, touches every sector of the U.S. economy, frequently multiple times. It is the industry that links the members of the supply chain (i. e., suppliers and manufacturers) through the activities of establishments and persons that sell to industrial, institutional, and commercial users but do not sell in significant amounts to retailers or ultimate consumers. In traditional terminology, this is the industrial distribution channel.
The industry generates value in the "service outputs" of time, space and acquisition utility, i.e., waiting time or temporal convenience, market decentralization ...