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Unit 14: Disseminating Product Information to Retail Personnel

Monster’s investment in Cumulus has an added business benefit. Now that Monster Notes
maintains all of its product photos online, it is able to syndicate them to the retailers and
distributors in its distribution channel.
As shown in Illustration 2, here’s how the syndication process works.
1. At periodic intervals, Monster uploads all of its new product photos, together with
the descriptive information (or metadata tags) used to catalog them, to a third party
Web site. Monster is relying on Tentoe (www.tentoe.com) to support syndication
services over the Web.
2. The descriptive information is stored in a standardized format as XML-tagged
elements, using predefined tag sets.

3. When distributors and retailers need photos and descriptions of Monster products,
they connect to the third party site, select the products they want, and download the
product information to their own electronic environment.

Figure 2
Illustration 2: Monster distributes its product photos through a syndication service on the
Web. Thus Monster’s customers—network-savvy retailers and distributors—can easily
access all of Monster’s product information and incorporate it into their e-commerce
environments.
As a result, Monster is able to ensure that its distributors and retailers quickly receive new
product photos and the related product information for their own product promotions, as
well as stay abreast of changes. Moreover, Monster only needs to publish to a single
destination on the Web. The syndication service then redistributes the photos to others
who want them. For example, Radio Shack and Crutchfield can each find just the Monster
products they sell on their own Web sites and retail outlets. When Monster produces new
photos, Radio Shack and Crutchfield can then incorporate changes into their e-commerce
environments on their own production schedules.

As a result, Monster not only produces the product photos for its own internal use. Monster
is also able to electronically distribute them via various sales, training, and promotional
channels. Monster is able to ensure that these businesses can easily and accurately
merchandise Monster products.

Cumulus as a Competitive Distribution Mechanism
In the end, Monster relies on Cumulus for merchandising its products in the digital age.
“Cumulus is not just an internal organization and archiving tool,” Klar concludes. ‘It’s
Contd...

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