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.

3. Intellectual: Segment customers on the basis of their current knowledge and understanding of the company and its products.

A. Knowledge of company and company product

3. Knowledge of product technology

Above average – current customer. Members of the segment are:

Expert Users

No.	SIC	Year	Note
1	1382	2001	Remington Oil & Gas buys information from seismic data vendors which allows exploration firms to pinpoint the best drilling sites. That lowers finding costs and boosts success rates. Remington timed its purchases carefully and bought vendors at the bottom of the oil and gas market at a discount rate.
2	3571	1992	DEC will sell computers directly to customers rather than through its conventional sales force or usual dealer channels.
3	3571	2002	IBM agreed to license its thin client technologies to Neoware, to stop making its NetVista thin client product line, and to name Neoware as its preferred provider of thin client appliance products. This deal cost Neoware 375,000 shares of stock, or about $2.35 million. Neoware bought only product lines and, in some cases, a small staff of sales people. So, they were not tied down with assets and integration problems with other companies' information systems.
4	3577	2003	Nokia, the world's largest manufacturer of cell phones, recently announced that it would team up with chipmakers Texas Instruments and STMicroelectronics to make CDMA chips for its newest phones.
5	3674	2001	The release of a chip called the Athlon in the fall of 1999 changed everything. Developed internally, it ran at higher clock speeds and delivered significantly better scores on most benchmark tests than Intel's Pentium III.
6	3694	1989	3M sells at the factory floor, demonstrating its products to the workers that use them, rather than talking to a company's purchasing agent.
7	7372	1987	Apple releasing HyperCard software: makes it easy for non-technical people to program or customize information in their computers. Allows users to easily link any kind of data – graphics, text, even sound together. After Aug. 15 will come free with PCs.
8	7372	1998	Cambridge Technology advertises by organizing seminars and dinners around the world. People come to discuss technology issues.
9	7372	2004	When Microsoft Corp. launched Windows 95 operating systems, the company consolidated its market position and greatly enhanced its equity valuation by negotiating a billion dollar subsidy from many of its best customers and developers. During the product development the company sent out 400,000 beta version copies of Windows 95 to thousands of beta sites worldwide. Individuals and organizations would help track bugs and suggest improvements in exchange for receiving the software in advance and in effect influence the program's development and get help with any problems that arose. Microsoft essentially came up with a valuable technical population the size of a major city to help improve the quality and capabilities of its new operating system. The final stage of Windows 95 development was $900 million which is far more than the company had invested. The subsidy has enabled the company to produce a far better product for less money and time.
10	7375	1996	Axciom Corp. crosschecks a client's customer database with its own, one of the world's largest customer databases. It helps clients perform complex queries on the data and update data if it is not current.
11	7375	2004	Microsoft is releasing a trial version of its own search technology. That trial, contained on a separate Web site, offers a much awaited glimpse at the software giant's expensive yearlong effort to create a Web search engine to rival Google.

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