Marketing distribution channel

Depiction of a marketing distribution channel or supply chain. This type of figure, where the boxes represent channel members and arrows represent the flow of goods, is quite common in business management.

For a discussion of advertising participation rates in channels, see, e.g., He, Prasad & Sethi (POM 2009).

Edit and compile if you like:

%% Depiction of a marketing distribution channel or supply chain. 
%% Author: Ashutosh Prasad
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{arrows,positioning} 

\usepackage[active,tightpage]{preview}
\PreviewEnvironment{tikzpicture}
\setlength\PreviewBorder{5pt}%


\begin{document}

\begin{figure}
\centering
\begin{tikzpicture}[node distance=1cm, auto]  
\tikzset{
    mynode/.style={rectangle,rounded corners,draw=black, top color=white, bottom color=yellow!50,very thick, inner sep=1em, minimum size=3em, text centered},
    myarrow/.style={->, >=latex', shorten >=1pt, thick},
    mylabel/.style={text width=7em, text centered} 
}  
\node[mynode] (manufacturer) {MANUFACTURER};  
\node[below=3cm of manufacturer] (dummy) {}; 
\node[mynode, left=of dummy] (retailer1) {RETAILER 1};  
\node[mynode, right=of dummy] (retailer2) {RETAILER 2};
\node[mylabel, below left=of manufacturer] (label1) {Participation rate $\theta_1$};  
\node[mylabel, below right=of manufacturer] (label2) {Participation rate $\theta_2$};
% The text width of 7em forces the text to break into two lines. 

\draw[myarrow] (manufacturer.south) -- ++(-.5,0) -- ++(0,-1) -|  (retailer1.north);	
\draw[myarrow] (manufacturer.south) -- ++(.5,0) -- ++(0,-1) -|  (retailer2.north);
% There is a slight overlap of the arrows with the (manufacturer) south edge
% because creating the offset in another way didn't compile. 
 
\draw[<->, >=latex', shorten >=2pt, shorten <=2pt, bend right=45, thick, dashed] 
    (retailer1.south) to node[auto, swap] {Competition}(retailer2.south); 
% The swap command corrects the placement of the text.

\end{tikzpicture} 
\medskip
\caption{Structure of the Market} 
\end{figure}

\end{document}