A recent innovation by Amazon, the Vendor Flex program, seeks to lower overall transportation costs but also creates new forms of channel conflict with competitors. As a partner in the Vendor Flex program, P&G agreed to allow Amazon to build fulfillment centers within P&G's own warehouses, thus helping to eliminate some of the costs of transporting P&G's products to Amazon's fulfillment centers. Believing that the program was giving its competitor Amazon an unfair advantage, Target reacted vigorously, moving all P&G products from prominent end-cap positions in its stores to less prestigious and less visible locations. Target also stopped using P&G as its primary source of advice for planning merchandising strategies within each category. This is an example of ____________ channel conflict.
a. horizontal
b. independent
c. conventional
d. coercive
e. vertical

Horizontal channel conflicts occur when members of the same level of marketing channels have disputes or disagreements regarding the sales strategies for one or more product lines.

In this case, Amazon and Target are both retailers, and since Target felt that P&G was unfairly helping Amazon, they reacted by changing their marketing strategies for P&G's products. The conflict here is between Amazon and Target who are both in the same level of marketing channels.