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

Establish a service organization

No. Year SIC Note
1 2004 5251 Big-box home improvement retailers like Home Depot and Lowe's are seeing increased demand for installation and other services. The baby-boomers who earned a reputation as do-it-yourselfers are now looking towards traditional stores to do the hard work. Home Depot conducts 11,000 installations on the average weekday, its service revenue rose 26% to $957 million in the quarter ending Oct. 31, 2004. The business accounted for about 5% of Home Depot's total revenue. Home Depot's service business includes installations for customers, business-to-business installations and products purchased to be installed. Competitor Lowe's expects home-installation sales of $2 billion in 2004, up from 2003 sales of $1.5 billion. Flooring, door, window and kitchen-cabinet installations form the core of installation sales. Both big-box stores hire outside contractors to do the work.
2 2001 7011 Marriott is offering a new broadcasting business. It will launch a new venture that will transmit meetings and events around the globe via satellite and Webcasts. The idea is to lure new customers and meetings to the chain. The venture will be called "EventCom Technologies by Marriott" but the idea isn't to become a technology provider. Marriott will book meeting space and its hotels and clients' office, set up catering, decorations, camera crews, and arrange satellite broadcasts, video and audio conferences, or Webcasts of meetings for any size. Clients will receive a single invoice for all the services.

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