Should manufacturers discriminate between high street retailers and online retailers when it comes to pricing?

A really interesting article on trade pricing has been put on the BBC: BBC NEWS | Business | Firms 'ramping up online prices' The beef of the online retailers is - why are they being charged more than the high street retailer for the same product? I would argue that the product that a customer buys online is not the same as the product that she buys in the high street - purely because of the different shopping experience in both cases. Besides this, the two types of retailers differ in how they spend on product specific expenses, which affects the shopping experience. In the case of the high street retailer, the retailer holds inventory, provides shelf space for display and branding purposes, allowing customers to touch and feel products, and most importantly instant gratification to the customer. These are all "high value intangible components" of the "product" that a customer buys. These in turn fuel the brand of the product, and influence buying behaviour - not just in the high street stores, but also online. High street retailers are thus correct in demanding concessions off the list price of the product from manufacturers. Online retailers don't do all this. They require that manufacturers hold inventory. Thus they spend less "on behalf of the manufacturer" than high street retail stores. While recognising that they do have high costs - especially in customer acquisition and retention, they don't spend on branding the product. They spend on branding themselves. Thus I'd say that from a value perspective and an activity based costing perspective, manufacturers would be wise to give high street retailers greater discounts than online retailers off the list price, but calculate this after carefully analysing the impact this would have on prices that customers pay!