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.

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
Serve current customers with new products, saving customer purchase time

Add products not carried by local competition

No.	Year	SIC	Note
1	2004	4513	FedEx has also begun to offer money back guarantee with its LTL business thus making it the first LTL carrier to do so. The best part about the LTL business for FedEx is that for once it does not have to compete against UPS which dominates the U.S. ground parcel market. UPS concentrates on shipments under 1,000 pounds and forwards anything bigger to its supply chain services subsidiary.
2	2002	4899	RealNetworks, a software company, has signed up more than 600,000 broadband subscribers that pay at least $9.95 a month over their subscription for broadband to get the company's online entertainment service with audio and video content. Much of their content is not offered elsewhere.
3	1994	5211	In 1989 following Home Depot, Lowe's opened its first superstore (a success). Had 2,000 more items than smaller stores, selling everything from jigsaws and tractors to VCRs and Oriental rugs.
4	1987	5331	Casey's convenience store offers fresh-made pizza. The pizzas pull in more customers, and those customers buy higher margin items like fountain sodas. Why does it work? Often nearest restaurant a truckstop 6 miles away.
5	2001	5331	As the market reaches saturation, the retailer needs to increase its share of customer's wallets rather then depend on gaining more and more new customers. To do this, Wal-Mart has launched on a mission to tailor merchandise to local tastes. Rural Wal-Marts stock Spamoflage, Spam in camouflage cans which has proved popular with hunters. Wal-Marts in regions with high Hispanic populations stock popular Mexican foods and affluent customers are lured in with high-definition televisions and bookstores.
6	2001	5331	99 Cents Only stores are both attractive and carry lots of stock so that they have broader appeal than some of the bigger players like Dollar General and Family Dollar stores.
7	2003	5411	Wegmans stores carry 60,000 different items, 42% more than the industry average. For example, the cheese department stocks no fewer than 500 choices from around the world.
8	2002	5900	With Universal and its 29 percent share of the music in the fold, Rhapsody will offer 175,000 tracks. That's more than any other service except Emusic, a Universal unit that offers more than 200,000 downloadable MP3 songs from mostly independent artists.
9	2003	5942	Book Baron has expanded from 3,000 sq. ft. to 20,000 plus three other locations and an online store. It is the biggest used and rare-book store in Southern California. The store specializes in used and rare books but also carries new books at discounted prices.
10	1991	5945	Toys 'R' Us opened its first store in Japan, cracking the world's No. 2 toy market after the U.S. The typical Japanese toy store stocks between 1,000 and 2,000 items, while Toys 'R' Us will start out with about 8,000 different items.
11	2000	6141	Providian finds gold in the nonprime credit card market. It has signed up so many cardholders in the last year that it posted a stunning 66.4% rise in loans outstanding to $18.71 billion – the biggest gain among the top 10 issuers. Net income grew 86%. It levies a steep 23.9% rate on its lower-end customers.
12	2001	6141	GreenPoint Financial Corp. deals in high-risk, no-documentation loans, a market too small for big business competitors but with high returns to make up for its risk factor.
13	1999	7375	In partial response to the growth of the low end competitors, Reuters has become a leading provider of news on the Internet. It sells this news to two hundred Internet sites and receives 55% of its U.S. Media revenue from the Internet.

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