Final Customer Purchasing from an Intermediary of the Product

Use Steps: Use steps include all the Final customer's activities to find the appropriate product category at the Intermediary, to choose among the alternatives to the product and to take delivery of the product.

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

1.
Money: Reduce the money the customer uses with the product. For more ideas on using pricing, please see the Improve/Pricing section of StrategyStreet.

B. Reduce the customer’s spending on people, purchases or capital costs the customer uses with the product itself

Purchase costs used with the product itself

Reduce purchases of items used with the product itself

No.	Year	SIC	Note
1	1987	3500	It costs 22 cents to mail a local letter, but a fax sent from one SF office to another goes for free over local telephone lines. The recipient pays only 5 cents a page for specially coated fax paper.
2	2000	3576	Kmart unveiled its free web service, Bluelight.com, only four months ago and has already signed up 1.3 million users. Everyday it adds another 20,000 more freeloaders.
3	1990	4813	Traffic aggregators buy large blocks of long-distance time from major carriers (AT&T, MCI, Sprint) then resell the time to their customers at a rate that's lower than what the customer would pay if they dealt directly with the carrier.
4	2001	5122	Pharmacy-benefits managers are getting into the practice of pharmacy by designing drug-benefit packages with specific drugs to help cut costs.
5	1987	5411	Frank's Supermarkets are testing electronic green stamps. Magnetic stamp cards hold about 10 books of stamps each – this does away with licking & sticking.
6	2001	5621	The Chico's look, built mostly around wash-and-wear fabrics, is loose and colorful. Prices are moderate, ranging from $20 to $150. While there is a marketing emphasis on new items, the basics are meant to be mixed and matched season after season.
7	2003	5812	Starbucks will be releasing a Visa card that features a reloadable stored value Starbucks card and works like a debit card. Qualified customers will be extended a credit line. Each time the card is used, the customer amasses rebates that can be spent at outlets in North America. Starbucks can thus pick up sales as consumers earn rewards to spend at the stores. 11 million cards have been activated since 2001, and 11% of store transactions are through the card.
8	2002	6141	American has begun to replace the green and yellow AmericanExpress card with new charge cards that allow holders to earn merchandise points and frequent flier miles for every dollar charged. Only one fee is charged from $65-$130.
9	2003	6159	Alliance has most of the business to itself in its Canadian Air Miles loyalty program. That business started as a frequent-flier program, but has evolved by rewarding consumers for things they buy each day, such as groceries and gas.
10	1996	7372	Open Market, First Floor Software, Forefront Group, & Freeloader all have off-line browsers, smart programs that search for Web pages with selected news and other information and deliver them right to users' computers; this helps save money on internet connection charges.

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