Intermediary Customer Purchasing from the Product Producer

Obtain Steps: The Obtain steps include all activities preceding the selling of the product. These activities include the costs of identifying potential suppliers and stocking the product.

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

1. Money – Reduce the money the customer uses with the product

A. Reduce the level of payment for use of the product

Reduce price for a comparable product

No.	SIC	Year	Note
1	0	1991	Many think that brand name power is weakening. Retailers are forcing companies to divert dollars from advertising into costly trade promotions, such as payments for space on store shelves.
2	3663	2000	The U.S. market is jammed with more than 20 brand names. The retail chains that sell the vast majority of TVs exert tremendous pressure on manufacturers to keep prices low making for razor-thin profit margins and retailers are reluctant to try an unknown.
3	3674	2001	World-wide demand soft, Intel is introducing its 1.7-gigahertz Pentium 4 chip at $352, far below the typical $500 to $600 at which its new microprocessors have been previously introduced.
4	3714	2003	AutoZone's pay on scan works this way: a manufacturer sends oil filter to AutoZone warehouses without collecting payment. The filters remain on the manufacturer's books even as they are moved onto store shelves. When a customer buys a filter at the checkout counter it becomes AutoZone's for a few seconds as it is being scanned and sold. Soon after the manufacturer is paid. AutoZone claims the deal is able to book the whole $12 retail price of the filter as revenue because the company is what is known as the primary obligator to the customer by selecting suppliers, setting the price and by being responsible for getting the product to the customer.
5	4899	2003	To date the mobile operating system business has been a two-horse race between Microsoft and Symbian, the London-based consortium led by Nokia. Linux has also been recently championed by Motorola. But SavaJe has developed yet another operating system for mobile phones. The company has 90 employees and only six months of cash in the bank. SavaJe's OS, which lets souped-up phones play movies, music and 3-D videogames, is in most cases faster than its competitors. The system, using Sun Microsystems' Java language, is also more secure, allows better color graphics and costs less. Symbian charges $5 to $7 per phone, but with all the attendant software licenses phone companies must buy, the total price can hit $13 to $15. SavaJe says it charges $8 to $10 with the licenses included. And unlike Symbian or Microsoft, this operating system is beholden to none.
6	4899	2005	Comcast Corp. is forming its own nationwide fiber network so it won't have to rely entirely on satellites to beam TV signals among its local cable systems. Universities are taking lines at discount prices to form their own data sharing networks.
7	5331	2004	Taobao Chinese online trading site doesn't charge users, and promises to remain free for the next three years.
8	6141	2004	First Data is expected to take the next step and offer banks its own credit cards. These cards would be co-branded with the banks, as Visa and MasterCard do today, but First Data could give the banks a bigger cut of each transaction fee than they now get from Visa and MasterCard. "Banks and retailers would now have a way to bypass Visa and MasterCard and keep more of the money for themselves. The explosive growth in debit cards is changing the game. By being the first to market with emerging technologies–First Data can grab market share.
9	7812	1999	Networks typically license prime-time shows for less than their production cost, a deal producers accept in hopes of the show's running enough seasons to accumulate 100 episodes, after which it can be sold in syndication.

<<Return to Obtain Steps