Marketing Channels 8th Edition by Bert Rosenbloom

Exercise 2

RadioShack, with over 6,500 locations worldwide, has been struggling for a number of years with an image of being "old-fashioned" or "out of touch" with new technologies. RadioShack was viewed by tech-savvy consumers as a place to buy odds-and-ends electrical items, such as adaptors and cables, but not the place to buy smartphones. But by the latter part of the first decade of the twenty-first century, RadioShack, which started to refer to itself in advertisements as "The Shack," began selling what is arguably the most iconic example of high-tech, cool products-the Apple iPhone. Apple Inc., which is known for being very selective about who qualifies to sell its products, nevertheless decided to let RadioShack sell the iPhone.
Why do you think Apple decided to use RadioShack as a channel member for selling iPhones? Do you think the product life cycle played a role in Apple's decision?