Your family runs a specialty ice cream parlor, Scoops. It manufactures its own ice cream in small batches and sells it only in pint-sized containers. After someone not affiliated with the company sent six pints of your ice cream to a popular talk-show host, she proclaimed on her national TV show that it was the best ice cream she had ever eaten. Immediately after the broadcast, orders came flooding in, overwhelming your small-batch production schedule and your limited distribution system. The company's shipping manager thinks she can handle it, but you disagree.

a) List the reasons why you need to restructure your channel of distribution?

b) Building on question a, determine a new channel structure for Scoops. Write a proposal to present to your key managers.

c) Now that you have a basic channel structure for Scoops, list the market, product, and producer factors that will affect your final channel structure.