Test Flashcards
What are some key features of Web 2.0 that differentiate it from Web 1.0? Please also discuss ONE implication of Web 2.0 for e-business.
Web 1.0 was largely based on one-way communication, which featured static websites without
interactive content. Web 2.0, on the other hand, provided the basis for rich media generation and
sharing, and facilitated interaction between individuals.
One of the implication of Web 2.0 for e-business is user-generated content, which forms the basis
for online media networks, blogs, and e-commerce. eBay, for example, has utilized this feature to
provide consumers with tools to buy and sell items online, rate, comment and review product, in
order to inform consumer’s decision making and influence the reputation of goods or service
providers.
Describe three different revenue models for a portal such as Yahoo!
Yahoo is a portal and therefore is can generate revenue through advertising where it offers
advertising space, it can generate revenue based on affiliation where it leads users to a specific site
and based on the number of visits generates revenue and it can have a subscription model where,
by paying a premium subscription, users can access premium content.
What is the customer value proposition model and explain it on an example?
Customer value proposition model breaks down into three main parts: content, experience and
platform. The content part can be further broken down into information and the product, experience
is the package that is being presented to the customer and the platform (How is it delivered?) can be either be internal or
external. On an example it is the Amazon one where information is considered physical products
while products are movies and software, for the user experience it is the messages they receive
about their orders, notification about the delivery, tracking of their packages, while the platform
and the internal information is the data about customers and external information is information
on phones and tablets.
What are some of the internet audience features?
Number of unique visitors, their internet connection, intensity of scope of use, demographics and
community effects.
List a few display ad types and describe them?
Display types:
- Banner ads
- Video ads
- Riche media
- Native advertising
- Ad exchange
- Sponsorship
- Advertising networks
Banner ads are still the most popular way of advertising online even though they are not as
efficient, they are situated on top of a web page to display a promotional message, and video ads
are usually ads presented to the viewer during or before the start of the video. Rich media
advertising is characterized by being dynamic in nature with a lot of visual elements like videos,
images and sounds. Native advertising is advertising that mimic editorial content, sponsored
advertising is when web sites sell advertising space to specific firms and advertising networks are
networks that connects marketers and web space.
Describe two types of user buying decision?
User buying decision:
- Online
- Offline
Offline buying decision are influenced by psychological, social and cultural factors which then
lead to a consumer evaluating and responding to market stimuli, firm capabilities and brand image
which leads to in store behavior ending with a final purchase.
Online busing decision also influenced by demographics and user consider are influenced by
market stimuli, brand image, web sites of products, their own capabilities and knowledge when
operating a device, previous experiences which can be summarized in creating clickstream
behavior which can lead to purchase.
What are generic price strategies and give examples?
“Openness Control
Compatibility Open migration Controlled
migration
Performance Discontinuity Performance
play” se skema spg 7
Open migration is a situation where new technology is introduced to the market and is provided
by many vendors with low switching costs, examples of it are PC and printer. Performance play is
a new technology introduced to the market but is under hard control of the company that has it for
example Zip Drive. Discontinuity is characterized by a new technology on the market that is not
compatible with the old one with many suppliers like digital cameras and Controlled migration is
when a new technology is introduced on the market that is made to dominate the market for
example Intel and Windows.
What are the types of standard wars and what are the strengths in standard wars?
Se spg 8:
Incompatible Compatible
Compatible Evolution v revolution Rival evolution
Incompatible Rival revolution Revolution v evolution
What is network neutrality? Why is it controversial (some people are for it while other people
are against it)?
Network neutrality is the concept where ISP providers should not limit of discriminate based on
location, usage, users and other factors. It is said that all should have equal speed, be fair and level
ground competition. On the other hand ISP should be rewarded for investing in their infrastructure
and reap the benefits of their investments.
spg 10: Please choose an e-commerce company and analyze its business model using the
framework/concept we have covered in class.
spg 11: Please choose an industry and discuss how e-commerce influences the industry using Porter’s
five forces.
Industry: Gaming industry EA
Threat of new entrants:
The gaming industry barriers to entry are low with minimal government regulation and
manageable costs. Programming games does not require rare or hard to find materials but it does
require skills to find the necessary people to create a best seller video game.
Rivalry among existing competitors:
It is the biggest threat to EA since video game players do not have a high degree of loyalty to a
publisher and rather pick games based on their content. Unlike Coca Cola or Nike EA cannot rely
on its brand name since players pick the titles not the creators.
Bargaining power of buyers:
Buyers are were selective and have a vast variety of different game suppliers to pick from. There
are also other web sites that sell the same product and the competition is very big. If a company
fails to impress with a video game title consumer will go to a different company and spend their
money there.
Bargaining power of suppliers:
Suppliers supply gaming companies with hardware and software and there are many suppliers of
these on the market meaning the company can pick and is not pressured by a specific supplier.
Threat of substitute products / services:
A substitute product in this case be an app game offered for a much smaller price than a new game.
But due to the nature of requiring a powerful game console or PC phones cannot compete in that
way.
What is upstream and what is a downstream supply chain?
Upstream supply chain is the supply chain that includes tier 1, 2 or 3 suppliers and a contract
supplier while downstream suppliers are distributor, retailer, and customer. Price, quantity,
capacity, inventory, schedules are discussed in the upstream supply chain while the downstream
supply chain has repair terms, customer relations, return policies and price.
What are some metrics we could use to measure social media marketing success? Example
of Facebook
Se spg 13. Brand awareness - number of unique visits - number of returning visitors - search ranking Brand engagement - number of members - number of comments - average length of time on the page Word of mouth - number of likes - number of re-blogs - number of reshares
Please explain the long-tail concept.
For example, Amazon has a few bestsellers and then a lot of niche items. The concept applied
here is: the number of accumulated sales of these niche items is equivalent to the sale of these
few bestsellers. It is a fairly new concept and limited to E-commerce, since e.g. the
recommendation function on many E-commerce pages can make the user awareness of items
which would never have been marketed.
From a business perspective, the long-tail products haven’t been focused on (no worth investing
in marketing effort on them), but with e-commerce and newer technology, there are new
strategies allowing for addressing this, e.g. recommendations. When on Amazon, purchasing
your DaVinci copy, Amazon can have an algorithm offering a similar, but older, book, getting
rid of this stock, and for a low price, which is better than not selling it at all. And this is
inexpensive.
Define intermediaries, disintermediation, reintermediation, and countermediation with
examples.
Travel industry have all of these, good example.
Intermediaries – the middle man between two points of transaction
Ex: the car seller is the middle man between the car manufacturer and consumer
Disintermediation – removing the middle man and forming direct relationships between two points
of transaction
Reintermediation – reintroducing the middle man, using new means of selling
Countermediation – companies make their own intermediaries to compete against existing
intermediaries
Ex:Amazon makes its own app store vs. instead of using google play store
What is a multi-sided platform? Compared with the re-seller model, what are some of the
disadvantages and advantages of the multi-sided platform?
se SPG 16
A Multi-sided platform is platform/middle man between two parties providing a service for their
interaction. E.g. Airbnb, Amazon Marketplace.
Advantages Disadvantage
Profiting of two customer segments Managing two customer segments
(different channels, services, activities in
general)
Not such a high risk since they offer ‘only’
a service, more possibilities for services
Revenue Model is commission based, don’t
get the big piece of the cake
Low cost, “just” the platform and no
logistics, production, etc.
Missing control over every single product
that is sold (no quality control)
Broader segment of products (profiting
from the long tail)
Easy scalability
Concentration on customer service
What is omni-channel retailing? What are some strategies/techniques companies could use
to engage in omni-channel retailing?
Seamless integration of multi- channel retailing
- Leverage the value of both online and offline
Focus shifted from product to service
Expanding the horizon of service from point-of-sale to the whole buying process
The technologies and strategies
- Bar code; QR code
- Augmented reality
- Mobile applications
Amazon: Reviews
Please try to analyze Youtube’s functionalities using the honeycomb model (the seven
functionality blocks are presence, relationship, identity, sharing, conversation, reputation,
groups).
Primary:
Sharing: key function is to share content, about various topics of your liking.
Secondary:
Conversation: comments below videos, not a major emphasis, mostly one-way conversation, but
both ways also possible. Conversations about the videos.
Reputation: number of subscribers, number of views
Identity (maybe): youtube bloggers (?), those who talk about themselves in the video they post
Please explain the phenomenon of crowdsourcing. How can companies utilize such
phenomenon in their business?
Definition (our own): Crowdsourcing in the concept of utilizing the resources of consumers/users
by providing some sort of incentive for the users to share their resources (either monetary or other).
Companies can use crowdsourcing to use and apply collective intelligence for prediction or
information, they can also use it to solve problems (TopCoder), innovate (DellStorm), companies
can also use it to produce massive amounts of creative works (iStockPhoto) or to filter and organize
information and use it for collective wealth (Kickstarter).
Examples
From “The rise of crowdsourcing” (Jeff Howe, 2006, Wired Magazine issue 14.06, June 2006)
- iStockphoto - crowdsourced stock photos that sells stock photos at $1-5 compared to $100-
150 that a professional photographer would traditionally charge.
- The TV station VH1 made a TV-program that crowdsourced viral videos made from the
internet
- InnoCentive, a platform that connects corporations looking for solutions to problems with
engineers/scientists who use the site as a source of secondary income
- Amazon Mechanical Turk - a platform that crowdsources labour to do so-called HIT
(human intelligence tasks)
What is bullwhip effect? How can such effect be reduced and coped with?
The bullwhip effect is the increasing swing in inventory in response to shifts in customer demand
as you move further up the supply chain. These supply chain inefficiencies are due to forecasts. It
can be reduced by improving the flow of information along the supply chain, create better pricing
strategies and policies and improve the supply chain efficiency.
What are some benefits of managing supply chain with information systems?
- Less human resources used
- Gathering of valuable data
- Optimization of processes
o Example: Can automatically find out which warehouse is closest to customer.
o Faster shipping, more happy customers. - Just-in-time products
o No stock
o Reduced inventory cost - More flexibility
- Reduced transaction costs
Please explain the differences between an industry consortium and a private industrial
network?
se spg 22 Industry Consortium Private Industrial Network Open Network (e.g. The Seam, develop services that empower agri-businesses) Closed Network (e.g. Walmart) industry-owned vertical marketplaces that serve specific industries and hence a smaller number of customers Just-in-time delivery possible, more efficient buying and selling throughout industry Closer Relationship between buyers and suppliers, improves demand forecasting, communications and conflict resolution Risk Reduction Increased supply chain visibility
Please explain the following dimensions of e-commerce security
Nonrepudiation - someone made a purchase - cheating from a customer site. How you can prove
that certain action has been done.
privacy - personal data that might be collected from an e-commerce perspective, merchants point
of view you have to make sure you hold to the law and are on the secure site of the rules.
Integrity - the data itself has been reached or stored
What does Omni-channel mean in terms of e-commerce presence?
Omni-channel is a cross-channel business model which companies use to increase customer
experience. Regarding e-commerce it means that businesses use multiple platforms such as
computers, tablets or mobile phones to do transaction with users in the form of buying, informing,
returning and others.
What are some of the unique features of e-commerce technology?
E-commerce:
- Ubiquity
- Global reach
- Universal standards
- Personalization and customasation
- Social technology
- Information density
- information Richness
- Interactivity
In term of ubiquity it means that e-commerce is present anywhere and at any time turning
marketplace into a marketspace. It reduces the cognitive energy and transaction costs for a user’s
point of view. Global reach is the total number of users an e-commerce can reach. Universal
standards are standards shared by all nations around the world reducing market entry costs, price
discovery and network externalities. Personalisation and customisation are two similar terms but
customasation means that a product can be customized for a user based on the users wishes and
preferences meanwhile personalization means targeting specific users with a marketing messages
based on selected criteria such as name, interests. Social technology is the term where users are
the ones generating the content. Information density is the total amount of quality information
available to market participants and this way it reduces information storage, collection and
communications costs. Information density can lead to price transparency, price discrimination
and cost transparency. Richness is the complexity of a message, it is especially beneficial for
smaller businesses because it enables a face-to-face communication between a customer and a
business (sales person). Interactivity is where technology allows a two way communication
between merchant and a customer.
Give examples of B2C, B2B, C2C, and social, mobile, and local e-commerce.
B2B is when a business sells to other businesses, Alibaba or Salesforce are example of B2B
businesses. B2B can be marketplace and industry networks.
B2C is when businesses sell to customers and examples are Amazon. B2C can be an e-tailer,
content creator, community provider, portal, transition, service provider and market creator.
C2C is when customer can sell to other customers and rely on a platform to enable search,
transactions and catalogues and an example is eBay.
A social e-commerce is Facebook where an e-commerce is enable by social networks on online
social relationships.
Mobile e-commerce is e-commerce enables by the use of mobile devices such as phone or tablets
which enable transactions. It can be done through iPhones, Androids and other OS.
Local e-commerce is e-commerce focused on a customer geo location for example like Uber.
Describe the three different stages in the evolution of e-commerce.
1995 – 2000: Innovation | 2001 – 2006: Consolidation | 2007 + : Re-Invention
The innovation period is characterized by being technology driven where the goal was to place a
new technology on the market and to accumulate a large market share. Consolidation period was
more business driven where the companies that lasted through the innovation phase and had a big
market share were focusing on keeping that market share and the Re-invention period came with
the launch of the iPhone where e-commerce shifted rapidly to mobile platforms.
Define disintermediation and explain the benefits to Internet users of such a phenomenon
Disintermediation is removing the middle man between a business and a customer, businesses can
sell to consumers directly in that way for example Apple and Dell.
What are some of the major advantages and disadvantages of being a first mover?
Being a first mover means that you have a new technology unknown to the market. You place it
on the market through a new distribution channel and generate a large user base and based on that
have a winner takes all situation on the market but at the same time a first mover has the
disadvantage of having high costs concerning the development and research of the product,
marketing it on the market and has to spend a lot of money on retaining the customers it has. Over
time they build high switching costs for the consumers in hopes to lock them in and prevent
competitors from taking them over.
What is a network effect, and why is it valuable?
A network effect is the phenomena where a user generates value for the network without being
paid. Every additional user increases the value of the said network this is also known as Metcalfe’s
law. An Example can be mobile phones when they enter the market, a user benefits from having
his friends, colleagues or family also having a phone and thus increasing its value.
What advantages does client/server computing have over mainframe computing?
Client/server computing is very flexible if there is a need for more computing power new server
can be added to the network, also if one of the servers breaks down another one can easily continue
the work until the first one gets fixed or replaced, furthermore processing load is split onto several
machines unlike in a mainframe where all the workload is on one machine. Both software and
hardware can be built economically and simply in a client/server.
