Distribution (business) in the context of "Energy supply"

In sales, commerce, and economics, a customer (sometimes known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a good, service, product, or an idea, obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier via a financial transaction or an exchange for money or some other valuable consideration.

Sales promotion is one of the elements of the promotional mix. The primary elements in the promotional mix are advertising, personal selling, direct marketing and publicity/public relations. Sales promotion uses both media and non-media marketing communications for a predetermined, limited time to increase consumer demand, stimulate market demand or improve product availability. Examples include contests, coupons, freebies, loss leaders, point of purchase displays, premiums, prizes, product samples, and rebates.

Sales promotions can be directed at either the customer, sales staff, or distribution channel members (such as retailers). Sales promotions targeted at the consumer are called consumer sales promotions. Sales promotions targeted at retailers and wholesale are called trade sales promotions.

Global Production Networks (GPN) is a concept in developmental literature which refers to "the nexus of interconnected functions, operations and transactions through which a specific product or service is produced, distributed and consumed."

Pricing is the process whereby a business sets and displays the price at which it will sell its products and services and may be part of the business's marketing plan. In setting prices, the business will take into account the price at which it could acquire the goods, the manufacturing cost, the marketplace, competition, market condition, brand, and quality of the product.

Pricing is a fundamental aspect of product management and is one of the four Ps of the marketing mix, the other three aspects being product, promotion, and place. Price is the only revenue generating element among the four Ps, the rest being cost centers. However, the other Ps of marketing will contribute to decreasing price elasticity and so enable price increases to drive greater revenue and profits.

Digital cable is the distribution of cable television using digital data and video compression. The technology was first developed by General Instrument. By 2000, most cable companies offered digital features, eventually replacing their previous analog-based cable by the mid 2010s. During the late 2000s, broadcast television converted to the digital HDTV standard, which was incompatible with existing analog cable systems.

In addition to providing high-definition video, digital cable systems provide more services such as pay-per-view programming, cable internet access and cable telephone services. Most digital cable signals are encrypted, which reduced the incidence of cable television piracy which occurred in analog systems.

The direct market is the dominant distribution and retail network for American comic books. The concept of the direct market was created in the 1970s by Phil Seuling. The network currently consists of:

• three major comic distributors:
  • Diamond Comic Distributors, which distributes most, if not all, non-DC/Marvel/Image/IDW/Dark Horse comics (having exclusive deals with those publishers) and wholesales Marvel Comics, Image Comics, IDW Publishing, and Dark Horse Comics.
  • Lunar Distribution (which distributes DC Comics since 2020 and Image Comics since 2023);
  • Penguin Random House Publisher Services (the distribution arm of the publishing company), which since 1 October 2021 distributes Marvel Comics, since 1 June 2022 distributes IDW Publishing, and since 1 June 2023 distributes Dark Horse Comics; and
• the majority of comics specialty stores, and
• other retailers of comic books and related merchandise.

The name is no longer a fully accurate description of the model by which it operates, but derives from its original implementation: retailers bypassing existing distributors to make "direct" purchases from publishers. The defining characteristic of the direct market however is non-returnability: unlike book store and news stand distribution, which operate on a sale-or-return model, direct market distribution prohibits distributors and retailers from returning their unsold merchandise for refunds. In exchange for more favorable ordering terms, retailers and distributors must gamble that they can accurately predict their customers' demand for products. Each month's surplus inventory, meanwhile, could be archived and sold later, driving the development of an organized market for "back issues."