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.

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 product

Imitate look and feel of a competitive product

No.	Year	SIC	Note
1	2004	0	Innovators may find it more prudent to defer decisions until they have more information about the innovation's fate and other players' experiences with it. Take Microsoft. It has rarely taken the lead in introducing new applications. It has deferred commitments and reserved the option to co-opt early movers with decisive bets. For instance, the Windows operating system followed innovation in Apple's Macintosh interface; Internet Explorer mirrored Netscape's Navigator; ActiveX followed Sun's Java; Windows CE came after the success of Palm OS; the MSN portal followed Internet pioneers Yahoo and AOL; Windows Media Player followed Real Networks' RealPlayer; and the Xbox game console followed Sony's PlayStation.
2	1991	2043	Both General Mills and Kellogg's are now copying each other with various entries in cereal market.
3	1991	2043	The big cereal companies keep up a parade of new products. Typically, they are either extensions of established brands, or copies of rivals' successes.
4	1992	2086	Gatorade has 85% market share in sports-drinks. Pepsi and Coke try to move in with All Sport and PowerAde. All Sport advertised through taste tests in stores. Gatorade ads directly target competition, use high-powered sports figures.
5	1990	2111	B&W introduced low-priced cigarettes in packs designed just like Liggett's.
6	2005	2519	The furniture industry will continue to take its design cues from the hip retailers known for their even hipper catalogs, including Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, and Restoration Hardware. It's not hard to copy their styles. Shoppers see a growing lineup of contemporary, colorful looks at their local furniture stores. The hipster stores are growing partly because they appeal to people who don't like to shop for furniture. Still, they often get beaten on price and delivery by the best traditional furniture stores, especially the strong regional players.
7	1995	2844	Both Crest and Colgate have come out with their own versions of baking-soda toothpastes. Colgate recently mailed out 11 million samples of its new Colgate Baking Soda & Peroxide brand.
8	2002	2844	By mimicking the hot trends in the world of shampoos and body lotions–From Breck shampoo and Revion Flex Balsam & Protein in the 1970s to Alberto V05 and Pantene today–Suave has grown into a $790 million brand.
9	2003	3571	With the Dell Digital Jukebox and Dell Music Store, the company is taking a page from Apple's playbook. The device features a sleek design and a hard drive with a large storage capacity, just like Apple's iPod. Dell's online music service is expected to offer thousands of songs for legal downloading, just like Apple's iTunes.
10	2004	3651	Apple Computer dominates the market for portable music players with its iPod devices. But it could face its toughest competition yet from Sony. Sony will sell a palm-sized device that uses a small hard-disk drive to store thousands of songs. Sony will sell its device under the Walkman brand and will be closely tied to Sony's Connect music download service. However, it will have to be great to unseat the iPod, as it is by far the best system available.
11	2000	3674	Lucent and Motorola teamed up two years ago to create a new DSP architechture called StarCore. To defuse interest in StarCore, ADI has introduced a similar product called TigerSharc and TI has done the same.
12	2002	3711	In 2003 General Motors releases its new models such as the XLR roadster, SRX which is a sports utility wagon aimed at rival BMW X5 and in mid-2003 the CTS will be upgraded.
13	2001	3711	Rivals imitations of BMW's 3-Series are using advanced technology to attempt to get ahead, such as equipping cars with four-wheel drive, a move that BMW itself matched with some of its 3-Series models.
14	2003	4813	Verizon Wireless Inc. said its third-quarter revenue jumped 18%, as it added 1.4 million subscribers and 100,000 customers for its new push-to-talk service. The nation's biggest wireless carrier, Verizon launched a push-to-talk service on Aug. 14 that competes with Nextel Communication Inc.'s popular Direct Connect product. That means Verizon added 100,000 push-to-talk customers in just over six weeks.
15	2001	4813	Major phone companies fought back against Internet Telephony services by adding their own, but they gave them little publicity because they make less money on them. Deutsche Telekom started its service in July, 1997.
16	2005	7375	Microsoft will officially launch its own search service. Loaded with bells and whistles such as local and desktop search and custom search feeds, the service is the company's formal challenge to rivals including Google, Yahoo, and Jeeves. It will be available in 25 markets in 10 languages via the company's Web portal MSN.com. Microsoft might be perceived as late entrant to the search, but it vows to provide the Web's fastest, most-concise results. Unlike rivals, it won't direct users to a bunch of links to other sites when they make a query.

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