About as close as the marketing discipline has ever come or is likely to come to having an “axiom,” is the well- known statement, “You can eliminate the middleman, but not the functions he performs.” This maxim, principle, or truism has been associated with the marketing discipline, and especially with regard to marketing channels, for many decades (Butler, 1917; Beckman &Engle, 1937). Although almost universally accepted as a self-evident truism in marketing, it was not until the decades of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s that the underlying economic basis for this maxim was rigorously examined by marketing scholars (Stigler, 1951; Bucklin, 1966; Mallen, 1973).