Category Management

Retail companies and the branded goods industry have been facing increasingly intense competition for years. The resulting pressure is further intensified by conflicts between manufacturers and retailers. Category management has been discussed as an approach to improve the manufacturer-retailer relationship for some time now. Stephanie Steiner presents a theory-driven and practice-oriented overview of the conflicts that exist in manufacturer-retailer relationships. She analyzes the extent to which the category management concept can contribute to resolving individual conflicts and examines its possibilities and limitations. Her findings indicate that the approach is only partially suitable for conflict resolution; therefore, she develops her own proposals for conflict regulation through the integration of an intermediary.