Bob Tedeschi of the New York Times today wrote in his e-commerce column about the difficult balancing act that manufacturers like PeaceWorks have to make in the online world, when selling to consumers without undermining their retail sales channel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/13/technology/13ecom.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin
The basic rule and the basic opportunity in this space are as follows:
* RULE: as a manufacturer, what you shouldn’t do is take undue advantage of your marketing control, and ensure that you do not give undue advantage to your online channel at the detriment of your retailers; the clear example is that if the brick-and-mortar segment is selling your product for X, you shouldn’t just under-cut them with a lower price;
* OPPORTUNITY: online connections provide you an opportunity to make the pie bigger, rather than just divide it; there is a lot of value that can be created through creative programs where you are not just competing on price.
For example, KIND Snacks developed an ADVANTAGE program (http://kindsnacks.com/frequent-kind.html) for consumers where we will not give them a lower price than at the stores – the price will be the same – but besides the comfort of automated home delivery, we also reward them through a real partnership that benefits both of us: we send them free samples of new products we are developing, and we ask them to give us feedback on them; we send them free promotional materials like t-shirts, and they wear them and help us promote KIND. We are also working to build a real NETWORK for the KIND COMMUNITY – so that the motto “Be KIND to your body, your tastebuds, and to the world” is true in all senses.
Be KIND to your body stands for eating healthy wholesome foods.
Be KIND to your tastebuds stands for eating TASTY food – you don’t have to sacrifice one for the other, as we have shown with KIND Fruit + Nut bars.
Be KIND to the world today means that by buying KIND bars, you are supporting our work with the award-winning cutting edge PeaceWorks Foundation, which launched and guides the OneVoice Movement and the Who Am I Film Project. But we also want it to mean that being KIND TO THE WORLD should connect to the way we all live our lives, and we want the KIND COMMUNITY to embody this motto in their daily lives, so we are working with our family of consumers to develop fun but meaningful ways to establish a new model along these lines…
Macadamias 
