Marketing Channels
To reach a target market, the marketer uses three kinds of marketing channels. Communication channels deliver and receive messages from target buyers, and include newspapers, magazines, radio, television, mail, telephone, billboards, posters, fliers, CDs, audiotapes, and the Internet. Beyond these, communications are conveyed by facial expressions and clothing, the look of retail stores, and many other media. Marketers are increasingly adding dialogue channels (e-mail and toll-free numbers) to counterbalance the more normal monologue channels (such as ads).

The marketer uses distribution channels to display, sell, or deliver the physical product or services to the buyer or user. They include distributors, wholesalers, retailers, and agents.

The marketer also uses service channels to carry out transactions with potential buyers.
Service channels include warehouses, transportation companies, banks, and insurance companies that facilitate transactions. Marketers clearly face a design problem in choosing the best mix of communication, distribution, and service channels for their offerings.

Supply Chain
Whereas marketing channels connect the marketer to the target users, the supply chain describes a longer channel stretching from raw materials to components to final products that are carried to final buyers  the supply chain for women's purses starts with hides, and moves through tanning operations, cutting operations, manufacturing, and the marketing channels bringing products to customers. The supp chain represents a value delivery system. Each company captures only a certain percentage of the total value generated by the supply chain. When a company acquires competitors or moves upstream or downstream, its aim is to capture a higher percentage of supply chain value.

Competition
Competition includes all the actual and potential rival offerings and substitutes that a buyer might consider. Suppose an automobile company is planning to buy steel for its cars. There are several possible levels of competitors. The car manufacturer can buy steel from U.S. Steel or other integrated steel mills in the United States (e.g., from Bethlehem) or abroad (e.g., from Japan or Korea); or buy steel from a mini-mill such as Nucor at a cost savings; or buy aluminum for certain parts of the car to lighten the car's weight (e.g., from Alcoa); or buy engineered plastics for bumpers instead of steel (e.g., from GE Plastics). Clearly, U.S. Steel would be thinking too narrowly of competition if it thought only of other integrated steel companies. In fact, U.S. Steel is more likely to be hurt in the long run by substitute products than by its immediate steel company rivals. It must also consider whether to make substitute materials or stick only to those applications where steel offers superior performance.

Marketing Environment
Competition represents only one force in the environment in which the marketer operates. The marketing environment consists of the task environment and the broad environment.
The task environment includes the immediate actors involved in producing, distributing, and promoting the offering. The main actors are the company, suppliers, distributors, dealers, and the target customers. Included in the supplier group are material suppliers and service suppliers such as marketing research agencies advertising agencies banking and insurance companies, transportation companies, and telecommunications companies. Included with distributors and dealers are agents, brokers, manufacturer representatives and others who facilitate finding and selling to customers.

The broad environment consists of six components: demographic environment, economic environment, physical environment, technological environment, political-legal environment, and social-cultural environment. These environments contain forces that can have a major impact on the actors in the task environment and make timely adjustment to their marketing strategies.