sues For years Ford Motor Company's channel strategy has included owning some of its own dealerships to sell its cars along with the large number of independent dealers through which most of Ford's cars and trucks are sold. Ford argues that these company-owned dealerships are not intended to compete with the inde pendents but exist mainly to provide Ford with insight into how retail auto deal erships should be managed and to get first-hand experience about how its cars should be sold through direct contact with final customers. The independent dealers have never bought Ford's argument and indeed have become even more skeptical about Ford's motives in recent years, questioning in particular whether Ford intends to enter the retail auto business in a big way and eventually elimi nate the independents. By the end of 2001, it looked like the dealers had won the debate. Ford decided to sell its 30 company-owned dealerships to existing independent Ford auto dealers, thus ending once and for all its presence at the retail level of automobile channels. Do you think Ford's rationale for its channel strategy of maintaining some company-owned stores to augment its large independent dealer network is credible? Why or why not? Discuss from both the manufacturer and dealer perspectives. Scanned with CamScanner