Final Customer Purchasing from the Product Producer

Acquire Steps: Acquire steps include all activities the customer completes preceding the use or the consumption of the product. These steps include the customer's efforts needed for evaluation and acquisition of the product.

B.
Resources: Reduce resources required for the use of the product

2.
Time – Reduce the time the customer must spend with the product

A. Reduce steps the customer must use with the product

Bring products closer to the customer
Target your products on markets with limited competition from the leading industry competitors
Target locations with low populations

Small towns and rural areas

No.	Year	SIC	Note
1	2000	4812	The CEO of Voicestream's strategy is to "go where they ain't." He has turned local monopolies into a profitable business. He sells phone services not just to farmers–four of the six cellular carriers make calls in Western's area.
2	2003	4813	Most large, regional Bells don't want to expand into smaller cities in the U.S. They'd rather focus on populated markets. That is the reason why Verizon Communications sold its local operations in Alabama and Missouri for $2.2 billion to CenturyTel.
3	1999	4813	U.S. Cellular Corp. is a provider of satellite-based wireless communications for rural areas. It targets a 100,000 square mile patch in the Midwest that has a market of 9 million people. The company has 2.5 million customers.
4	2003	4813	Traditional phones reached market saturation a long time ago. CenturyTel's niche in the industry avoids this as it focuses only on rural and smaller city customers. This helps CenturyTel avoid competition, as did its sale of its wireless business in 2002.
5	2002	7841	Movie Gallery is the nations #3 video-rental retailer and it focuses on secondary markets: small towns and rural areas that have between 5,000-30,000 residents.
6	2001	8062	The main strategy of LifePoint is to renovate the hospitals that it acquires (it currently has 21 of them, mostly in the rural Southeast). 20 of the hospitals are the only one in town.
7	1986	8062	Usually, by the time National Healthcare purchases a facility, it has such a poor reputation that as much as 80% of its potential patients go out of town for treatment.
8	2002	8062	Health Management is a hospital chain that owns and operates 43 sites in small towns. It is the industry's largest for-profit operator in non-urban areas with sales of $2 billion.

<< Return to Acquire Steps