Final Customer Buying 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.

2. Emotional: Segment customers according to the personal emotional needs of the segment.

B. Needs to avoid sources of anxiety

3. Economic limitations: Segment customers according to the limitations set by their economic interests and concerns

Segment's approaches to limit on spending
Customer segments with preferences for price point alternatives to the present product
Lower price point:
With fewer benefits in more than one Performance category

No. SIC Year Note
1 0 1991 When buyers are less confident financially, they buy value, not brand image. During recessions, private-label sales go up.
2 3400 2002 Newell Rubbermaid Inc. sells its high-end Calphalon line in department stores, but it also makes a lower-price Calphalon line that is sold in discount stores.
3 3571 2001 Dell Computer, which rocketed to the top of the PC market with its custom made PCs, is expected to unveil a prebuilt PC designed to compete with off-the-shelf models sold in retail stores.
4 3571 2003 Despite the PC market being mature and saturated, there are still business opportunities. Privately held eMachines Inc. has found a profitable niche selling low-priced desktop PCs at retail. In February, 70% of PCs sold at retail went for under $800.
5 3663 2002 Companies that can understand the needs of a cost-conscious customer can leverage this understanding. Wavecom is designing and selling simple and inexpensive kits that contain the guts of mobile phones. The modules can be popped into mobile-phones and sold cheaply. The company avoided a direct confrontation with market leader Nokia and doubled sales.
6 4481 2004 Carnival Corp, the world's largest cruise line, had to reroute ships, change ports and cut short itineraries in response to bad weather in the summer of 2004. However, losses were minimized by the company's ability to move its ports. This flexibility also helped the company survive the decrease in pleasure travel after September 11. Boats were moved to closer-in ports, fares were cut and shorter trips were offered to appeal to the nervous or budget-conscious traveler.
7 4512 2000 After reporting a 400 percent growth in its pretax profit British Airways announced that it would sell its subsidiary airline Go. Go is a low-fare carrier in Europe. British Airways hopes to gain the benefit of its investment in Go by selling it.
8 4512 2003 When companies make strategic actions that cause huge consequences to the market, the catalyst does not have to be technology. Southwest Airlines, for example, introduced cheap, no-frill airfare and it changed the consumers and the industry forever.
9 7011 2001 Limited-service hotels have begun to outperform the luxury and upscale sectors, "something that hasn't happened since the mid-1990's," says a lodging analyst. Budget hotels proved to be the only segment of the industry where occupancy rose in March.
10 7011 2002 With today's (2001) kibosh on corporate travel outlays, Choice Hotels looks great when it is the luxury segment that is hurting the most.
11 7011 2004 After several years of minimal growth in the travel industry, 2004 saw a pickup in demand for all industry sectors. Bluegreen Corp, which manages resorts in popular vacation spots, has run off eight straight quarters of 25% or better earnings growth. Blue green lets vacationers buy ownership interests in resorts and join a vacation club. The company targets customers 35-55 years old, married with children, with an annual household income between $70,000 and $75,000. Vacation spots are accessible by car and aimed at families. 130,000 families own a vacation ownership interest and about 94,000 are vacation club members. This is a points-driven system in which the customer buys a package of points and uses them to select vacation opportunities. The club added about 30,000 members in 2004.
12 7372 1998 Linux is an operating system that can be downloaded free or purchased from companies that offer tech support for it. The software is popular for its price, reliability, power, and compact design.

<<Return to Acquire Steps