Physical Distribution Management and its Environment Available to Purchase

ENVIRONMENTAL INTERRELATIONSHIPS The External Environment and Physical Distribution Management The constrained external environment within which the physical distribution effort operates must be fully understood in order to allow the necessary policies, practices, and co‐ordination to be defined and implemented. It should be borne in mind that the physical distribution manager can exercise little control, in the short run, over most of the external environmental variables. His transactions are a small portion of total economic activity which has the overall objective of translating consumer desires for time and place utility into a supply to satisfy their demands. In meeting the objective of satisfying demand, the distribution manager undertakes the generalised task groupings of movement and the handling of goods from the point of production to the point of consumption or use. A discussion of the ease with which these overall objectives are accomplished hinges on the manager's awareness and degree of influence over certain external environmental variables. Specifically these variables include: raw material and semi‐processed goods input distribution, existing distribution channels, market locations and their attendant characteristics, product demand considerations, site selection influences, competition, and transportation.