Although there has been much conceptual evidence of the positive link between customer equity and firm’s performance, comparison of relationships between two firms based on customer equity and firm profitability is limited. However, there is an increasing demand for research that investigates the relationship between firms in the competitive market structure. Therefore, the goal of this research is to examine the role of customer equity on firm profitability by comparing two firms, in a customer equity setting. The result shows that the effect of newly acquired CE of the second top company is stronger than that of the top company while the effect of retained CE of the top company is stronger than that of the second top company. Overall, the results offer strategic implications for firms to implement a different customer equity strategy in this competitive market structure.

This is the competitive structure of the wave power is studied thru patent information analysis with using of DWPI. The competitive structure is analyzed with worldwide patent pending(resistration) by year-on-year and patent pending(resistration) by nationality and IPC patent pending(resistration) current status by nationality and with technology development change of IPC patent pending(resistration) by nationality and the present condition of yesr-on-year patent pending(resistration) of main nations.

This analyzed the competitive structure of heat pump by nationality, by year-on-year and by technology on patent pending thru patent information analysis and applied KISTI holding DWPI for it. Heat pump technology is expected to position at development period or at start point reaching puberty just got out development period and to be consistently developed thru patent portfolio analysis.