Yup, and it is not just supermarkets. That's also how it worked at places like Egghead and CompUSA, and I expect how it still works at places like BestBuy. The manufacturer can have their distributor simply get the product into the store, and it goes on some bottom row in the darkest part of the store, will never be featured in a sale or promoted in the store's newspaper ad, and so on.
If you want anything more than that (good position in a row that doesn't have a homeless camp in it, a featured position in the store's ad, and so on) you pay for this.
This is one of the reasons Windows 95 totally killed OS/2, even though on every technical level (including the ability to run Windows programs) OS/2 should have won. Microsoft paid for ads. Microsoft paid for end caps with Windows 95. Microsoft chipped in to help software developers who wrote for Windows 95 afford store ads and end caps.
IBM was content to just shove OS/2 into the store, let it sit on the bottom shelf in the back where even someone who went to the store with the express purpose of buying OS/2 would have a hard time finding it. That and IBM's complete disdain for developers is what killed OS/2.
The mail order computer catalog businesses also work this way. When you read the entries for a given product in catalogs from different sellers, they are often nearly identical. That's because the item entries are not written by the catalog company. They are ad copy written by the product's vendor. When a product gets a quarter, half, or full page in a catalog it isn't because the catalog company thought it was great and wants to push it. It's because they thought the big fat check from the vendor to their ad sales department was great.
If you want anything more than that (good position in a row that doesn't have a homeless camp in it, a featured position in the store's ad, and so on) you pay for this.
This is one of the reasons Windows 95 totally killed OS/2, even though on every technical level (including the ability to run Windows programs) OS/2 should have won. Microsoft paid for ads. Microsoft paid for end caps with Windows 95. Microsoft chipped in to help software developers who wrote for Windows 95 afford store ads and end caps.
IBM was content to just shove OS/2 into the store, let it sit on the bottom shelf in the back where even someone who went to the store with the express purpose of buying OS/2 would have a hard time finding it. That and IBM's complete disdain for developers is what killed OS/2.
The mail order computer catalog businesses also work this way. When you read the entries for a given product in catalogs from different sellers, they are often nearly identical. That's because the item entries are not written by the catalog company. They are ad copy written by the product's vendor. When a product gets a quarter, half, or full page in a catalog it isn't because the catalog company thought it was great and wants to push it. It's because they thought the big fat check from the vendor to their ad sales department was great.