Question No: 02 Mr. Kulvinder Singh Gill, the Managing Director of Gil Tyres looked worried. His eyes were focused on Brijal Sharma, the head of marketing of the company. Brij had recently joined the company from a leading cosmetic firm and was keen to establish his reputation within the company. "Sharmaji the ageing patriarch, now in his seventies asked him with a hint of annoyance in his voice we already have so many different channels to work with that we are unable to properly manage. Now you want to create an e-commerce channel to sell tyres. Would it work?" Mr. Gill then looked around the board room which was filled with his employees many of them veterans of the industry for decades. 1 appreciate your instinct for innovation Mr. Sharma" he continued. "Innovation is good because it leads to progress. But you have to be careful about the chaos it might generate and throw everything into a tailspin." "We already have a direct channel for our OEM customers. We even sell directly to many of the transport companies with large fleets of trucks. We sell directly to the Army and the defense forces as well as to many other government institutions. Then we have a distributor set up who sell to our retailers all over the country. In some of the upcountry markets the distributors sell to wholesalers who resell the products to small retailers in these markets. We keep on getting complaints about the leakage of products from one channel to another. There are unscrupulous people in some of these trucking companies who buy our tires at a special price and then resell them in the open market and destabilize the operating prices. Now, in an already difficult situation like this would you like to complicate matters by bringing in competition from the ecommerce sector? Please think clearly and let me know." a. What are multi-channel networks? (2) b. Represent the channel organization at Gill Tires in the form of a diagram (3) c. What are the problems of handling a multi-channel network? (3) d. Do you think the E-commerce is a good idea for Gill Tires? Justify your answer (2)