Final Customer Purchasing from an Intermediary of the Product

Acquire Steps: Acquire steps include all activities the customer completes preceding the purchase of the product. These steps include the customer's efforts needed to identify and evaluate Intermediaries and travel to the Intermediary location.

A.
Knowledge: Add knowledge

2.
Relative benefits: Help customers understand the unique benefits of your product

B. Establish reputation for brand.

Draw on reputation of existing products

Combine product with strong brand of another firm

No.	Year	SIC	Note
1	2001	3695	The most recent advance in television has been the advent of the Personal Video Recorder. These new devices let you record any show, in perfect quality, without a VCR. They also let you pause and rewind shows. PVRs have been selling slowly. They are hard to explain to new customers. So, the makers of PVRs are teaming up with the satellite TV receiver product.
2	1998	5045	During Egghead Software's hired a new Chief executive who closed the remaining stores and started making Internet alliances and acquisitions. While the stores were bleeding, the Web Site sales were up fivefold to $12 million. The company is spreading the word of its existence through agreements with GeoCities, Yahoo!, CNET and USA.Net.
3	2003	5999	MusicNow will start selling individual songs online from a new digital music store on Best Buy's Web site. Before, MusicNow required that consumers subscribe to its service for $9.95 a month before they could purchase single songs online. It carries more than 400,000 songs. MusicNow will offer Best Buy customers one-time specials, such as 10 free songs they can download if they sign up for the subscription service. Best Buy will promote the MusicNow service with video screen kiosks in its stores.
4	2003	5999	RealNetworks has announced a new partnership with Comcast Corp. On Monday, Real, an audio and video software maker, will begin offering free one-week trials of its online music subscription service to Comcast's broadband subscribers. Subscribers who sign up for Real's Rhapsody service during the trial can transfer 10 songs to a CD for free. Rhapsody offers its library of 400,000 songs for $9.95 a month. Subscribers can download 325,000 of these songs for 78 cents apiece. Real already offers Rhapsody through such Internet service providers as Time Warner Inc.'s Road Runner and Verizon Communications Inc. Comcast, with some 5 million broadband subscribers, plans to aggressively promote Rhapsody on TV ads through December.
5	2004	6021	Banco Popular pitches annuities and CDs. In July Popular partnered with AIG to offer Popular Choice Annuity, an investment vehicle that guarantees a first-year bonus rate of 5.15% and several interest-rate options thereafter.
6	2001	6141	The major card companies are now investing heavily in their own initiatives to counter the electronic payments competitors. In 2000, Visa USA, Cisco, and Sun Microsystems created Visa DirectExchange which aims to give banks and easier way to process payment.
7	2004	6141	American Express will join forces with U.S. banks such as MBNA Corp. to develop new credit cards bearing both names. These banks also issue cards through competitors Visa and MasterCard. This is a breakthrough as Visa and MasterCard prevented banks from issuing cards on rival networks. These rules were eliminated by a court ruling. MBNA will handle the marketing, customer service and risk management for the new card while American Express will benefit from part of the merchant fees. Significant income is unlikely but the risk is also low.
8	2004	6141	The relationship with Citgroup is a "huge boost" for the Diners Club since it takes a brand with limited distribution network and more of a private-label status and gives it a national brand status.
9	2001	6162	MortgageRamp.com is trying to avoid some of the problems faced by earlier rivals. Many of them, unknown names in the industry, spent handsomely to lure borrowers and brokers to their Web sites. MortgageRamp.com, however, decided to pursue "buckets of borrowing" which meant signing deals with other organizations or companies that could drive hundreds of prospective borrowers to the site.
10	2002	6531	Last year, eReaty agents sold 1,400 homes, up from 750 in the preceding year. Already, about 500 Yahoo visitors have signed exclusive agreements with eRealty to represent them as buyer's agents, says eRealty's chief executive.
11	2001	7313	With the advent of 500 channel televisions, TV Guide is now a programming guide, a TV channel and a popular online site. TV Guide works with The Food Network providing segments about what celebrities eat and with VH1 coordinating music news coverage.
12	2000	7384	With You'veGotPictures and Kodak operating together consumers drop off their digital or regular film at a Kodak retailer and the service uploads the images to AOL.
13	1985	7389	Citicorp has a tie-in with Spiegel. Spiegel permits use of Citidollars, or bonuses accrued for credit card use, on its merchandise. Citidollars can be applied to up to 10% of the purchase price.

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