Flawed ways to pursue competitive efforts that will successfully differentiate a company's branded footwear from the branded offerings of rival companies include failing to produce branded footwear with an S/Q rating that is at least two-stars above the industry average in all four geographic regions. overspending on branded and search engine advertising, not operating the company's production facilities at full production capacity (to keep total production costs per pair below the industry average), and overspending on social responsibility and corporate citizenship. overspending on competitive efforts to differentiate the company's branded footwear so that the prices the company has to charge to cover costs per branded pair sold in the Internet and Wholesale segments are "too far above" the prices being charged by other rivals to capture a profitable volume of sales. failing to bid aggressively enough to sign enough celebrities to contracts to achieve celebrity appeal indexes of 275+ in each geographic region. not charging the highest wholesale price for branded footwear in all four geographic regions