Chapter 12 Homework

1. Explain the differences among total inter-firm trade, B2B commerce, and B2B
e-commerce.

Total inter-firm trade: The total flow of value among firms. B2B Commerce: all types of computer enabled inter-firm trade. B2B e-commerce: That portion of B2B commerce that is enabled by the internet.

2. What are the key attributes of electronic storefronts? What early technology are they descended from?

Simplest and easiest to understand form of B2B e-commerce, Owned by supplier, seller side solutions, seller biased. they descend from Automated Order Entry Systems.

3. List at least five potential benefits of B2B e-commerce.

Lower administrative costs, Lower search costs for buyers, Reduce inventory cost, Lower transaction costs,Increase production flexibility.

4. Define the term supply chain and explain what SCM systems attempt to do. What does supply chain simplification entail?Explain the difference between a horizontal market and a vertical market.

Supply chain: Firms that purchase goods, their suppliers and their suppliers' suppliers, includes not only the firms themselves, but also the relationships among them, and the processes that connect them.

5. How do the value chain management services provided by e-procurement companies benefit buyers? What services do they provide to suppliers?

includes automation of a firms entire procurement process on the buyer side and automation of the selling business processes on the seller side.

6. What are the three dimensions that characterize an e-procurement market based on its business functionality? Name two other market characteristics of an e-procurement Net marketplace.

Exchanges, Liquidity, and Industry Consortia

7. Identify and briefly explain the anti-competitive possibilities inherent in Net marketplaces.

8. List three of the objectives of a private industrial network.

Developing efficient purchasing and selling business processes industry-wide, Developing industry-wide resource planning to supplement enterprise-wide resource planning, operating on a global scale

9. What is CPFR, and what benefits could it achieve for the members of a private industrial network?

Collaborative Resource Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment

10. What are the barriers to the complete implementation of private industrial networks?

Chapter 11 Homework

1. Why did most communities in the early days of e-commerce fail? What factors enable some online social networks to prosper today?

2. How does a social network differ from a portal? How are the two similar?

Portals began as search engines and then added content, internet, and e-commerce services. Social networks were meant to be social sites with chat groups, bulletin boards, and so on

3. What is personalization, or personal value pricing, and how can it be used at the beginning of a product’s life cycle to increase revenues?

Personalization adjusts price based on the merchants' estimate of how much the customer truly values the product.

4. List and briefly explain three of the benefits of auction markets.

Liquidity: sellers and buyers are able to find each other quick and easy. Price Discovery: Buyers and sellers can quickly and efficiently develop prices for items that are difficult to assess. Price Transparency: Everyone in the world can see the asking and bidding prices for items.

5. What are the four major costs to consumers of participating in an auction?

Delayed Consumption Cost, Monitoring Cost, Equipment Cost, and Fulfillment Cost

6. What is an auction aggregator and how does it work?

Aggregators use computer programs to search thousands of web auction sites, and aggregate information on products, bids, auction duration, and bid increments.

7. What three characteristics define a portal site today?

8. List and briefly explain the main revenue sources for the portal business model.

ISP Services: provide web access and email services for a monthly fee

General Advertising: Charging for impressions delivered

Tenancy Deals: Fixed charge for guaranteed number of impressions

Commissions on sales: Revenue based on sales at the site by independent providers

Subscription Fees: Charging for premium content

Chapter 10 homework

1. What are the three dimensions where the term convergence has been applied? What does each of these areas of convergence entail?

technological, Content, Industry

2. Why has media industry convergence not occurred as rapidly as predicted? What are the five basic revenue models for online content and what is their major challenge? What will have to be done in order to overcome this obstacle to profitability?

Marketing, Advertising, Pay per view, Subscription, and Value Added

3. What four things must content provider firms do in order to generate meaningful revenues?

4. How has the Internet impacted the content that newspapers can offer?

5. What are the advantages and disadvantages of e-book content?

6. How has the Internet changed the packaging, distribution, marketing, and sale of traditional music tracks?

7. What are the factors that make nontraditional distinctly Web entertainment sites so popular with users?

Chapter 9 Homework

1. Why were so many entrepreneurs drawn to start businesses in the online retail sector initially?

costs were less, they were able to quickly react to customers needs, and could personalize things.

2. What frequently makes the difference between profitable and unprofitable online businesses today?

Economic Viability

3. Which segment of the offline retail business is most like online retailing? Why?

4. Name the largest segment of U.S. retail sales. Explain why businesses in this segment have achieved and continue to dominate online retailing.

Consumer Durables. These goods have a long lifespan

5. Name two assumptions e-commerce analysts made early on about consumers and their buying behavior that turned out to be false.

6. Why were customer acquisition costs assumed early on to be lower on the Web? What was supposed to reduce those costs?

7. Explain the distinction between disintermediation and hypermediation as it relates to online retailing.

8. Compare and contrast virtual merchants and bricks-and-clicks firms. What other type of online retailer is most like the virtual merchant?

9. What is the difference between a supply-push and a demand-pull sales model? Why do most manufacturer-direct firms have difficulty switching to one of these?

10. What are five strategic issues specifically related to a firm’s capabilities? How are they different from industry-related strategic issues?

11. What are some of the difficulties in providing services in an online environment? What factors differentiate the services sector from the retail sector, for example?

12. Compare and contrast the two major types of online service industries. What two major features differentiate services from other industries?

Chapter 8 Homework

1. What basic assumptions does the study of ethics make about individuals?

2. What are the three basic principles of ethics? How does due process factor in?

3. Explain Google’s position that YouTube does not violate the intellectual property rights of copyright owners.

4. Define universalism, slippery slope, the New York Times test, and the social contract rule as they apply to ethics.

5. Name some of the personal information collected by Web sites about their visitors.

6. How does information collected through online forms differ from site transaction logs? Which potentially provides a more complete consumer profile?

7. Name three ways online advertising networks have improved on, or added to, traditional offline marketing techniques.

8. Explain how Web profiling is supposed to benefit both consumers and businesses.

9. How could the Internet potentially change protection given to intellectual property?

10. What capabilities make it more difficult to enforce intellectual property law?

11. What are some of the tactics illegal businesses, such as betting parlors and casinos, successfully use to operate outside the law on the Internet?

Chapter 7 Homework

1. Explain the difference between marketing and marketing communications.

2. What are some reasons why online advertising constitutes only about 9 percent of the total advertising market?

3. What kinds of products are most suited to being advertised online?

4. What is the difference between an interstitial ad and a superstitial ad?

5. What are some of the reasons for the decline in click-through rates on banner ads today? How can banner ads be made more effective?

6. Why are some affiliate relationships called “tenancy” deals? How do they differ from pure affiliate relationships?

7. There is some controversy surrounding paid placements on search engines. What are some of the issues surrounding paid placement search engines? Why might consumers object to this practice?

8. What are some of the advantages of direct e-mail marketing?

9. What is the difference between hits and page views? Why are these not the best measurements of Web traffic? Which is the preferred metric for traffic counts?

10. Define CTR, CPM, CPC, and CPA.

11. What are the key attributes of a good domain name?

12. What are some of the steps a firm can take to optimize its search engine rankings?

13. List and describe some Web site design features that impact online purchasing.

Chapter 5 Homework

1. Why is it less risky to steal online? Explain some of the ways criminals deceive consumers and merchants.

The internet makes it possible to rob people remotely and anonymously. People can get download free music, steal people e-mails, and use viruses to shut down web site.

2. Give an example of security breaches as they relate to each of the six dimensions of e-commerce security. For instance, what would be a privacy incident?

Integrity- Rewiring a bank account

Nonrepudiation- Someone could order something online then deny it

Authenticity- Someone who claims to be something he is not violated this dimension

Confidentiality- Someone gets on someone else's personal site

Privacy- Someone uses someone else's personal information

Availability- Someone could shut down a web site

3. How would you protect your firm against a Denial of Service attack?

You could make it where users of the site have to log in

4. How does spoofing threaten a Web site’s operations?

Spoofing threatens the integrity of a site. they can end up stealing business from the site.

5. What are some of the steps a company can take to curtail cybercriminal activity from within a business?

Message encryption protects the messages by making them only accessible by the sender and receiver.

6. Identify and discuss the five steps in developing an e-commerce security plan.

Perform a Risk Assessment, Develop a Security Policy, Develop an implementation Plan, Create a Security Organization, Perform a Security Audit.

7. What are tiger teams, who uses them, and what are some of the tactics they use in their work?

A Tiger Team is a group of programmers or users who volunteer or are hired to expose error or security holes in new software or to find out why a computer network's security is being broken.

8. How do the interests of the four major payment systems stakeholders impact each other?

Chapter 4 Homework

1. Name the six main pieces of the e-commerce site puzzle.

Organizational Capabilities, Hardware Architecture, Software, telecommunications, Site Design, Human Resources

2. Define the systems development life cycle and discuss the various steps involved in creating an e-commerce site.

A methodolgoy for understanding the business objectives of any system.

System Analysis, Systems Design, Building the system, Testing, Implementation

3. What are the three main factors to consider when choosing the best platform for your Web site?

Page generation, Page delivery, Page content

4. Why is Web server bandwidth an important issue for e-commerce sites?

It determines how much material you ca put on your site.

5. Compare and contrast the various scaling methods. Explain why scalability is a key business issue for Web sites.

Horizontal scaling just uses multiple computers to do the work while vertical scaling increases the power of single computers. Scalability allows for your site to expand as demand rises.

6. What are the eight most important factors impacting Web site design, and how do they affect a site’s operation?

Functionality, Informational, Ease of use, Redundant navigation, Ease of purchase, Multi-browser functionality, simple graphics, and Legible text

7. Name and describe three tools used to treat customers individually. Why are they significant to e-commerce?

Widgets are prebuilt into a website and allow for a wide variety of things. CGI allows for interaction between the user and the server, ASP allows for dynamic pages.

8. What are some of the policies e-commerce businesses must develop before launching a site and why?

Privacy policy and accessibility rules

Chapter 3 Homework

Chapter 3

1. Why isn’t the Internet overloaded? Will it ever be at capacity?
There are always new servers being added and made smaller but with bigger storage space.Because of this it will never be a capacity.
2. Compare and contrast intranets, extranets, and the Internet as a whole.
An intranet is an internet belonging to an organization, usually a corporation, and only accessible by them. An extranet is also an internet for business purposes but is accessible by everyone. An internet a large network connecting everyone with a computer.
3. What are some of the challenges of policing the Internet? Who has the final say when it comes to content?
It is so easily accessible and anyone can put up whatever they want and they believe they are anonymous. The service providers have the final say over what goes on the internet.
4. Why was the development of the browser so significant for the growth of the Web?
People could search anything they wanted at a single location
5. Name and describe five services currently available through the Web.
Blogs, Podcast, Wikis, Internet Television, Video Conferences
6. What are at least three new services that will be available through the next generation of the Internet?

Mobile Internet,

Chapter 2 Homework

1. What are the eight key components of an effective business model?

Value proposition, Revenue model, Market opportunity, Competitive environment, Competitive advantage, Market strategy, Organizational development, Management team

2. Describe the five primary revenue models used by e-commerce firms.

Advertising, Subscription, Transaction, Sales, and Affiliate

3. Why is targeting a market niche generally smarter for a community provider than targeting a large market segment?

They usually have superior products and can provide greater service to local markets

4. Besides the examples given in the chapter, what are some other examples of vertical and horizontal portals in existence today?

Horizontal- DMOZ

Vertical- Convert-Files.com

5. What are the major differences between virtual storefronts such as Drugstore.com and bricks-and-clicks operations such as Walmart.com? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

A virtual storefront is just a virtual version of the store while a brick-and-click is an online distribution channel for a company with physical stores as well. Brick-and-clicks operate without any ties to physical locations.

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

1. What is e-commerce? How does it differ from e-business? Where does it intersect with e-business?
E-commerce is the use of the internet and the web to transact business.

E-business refers to the digital enabling of transactions and processes in a firm

They cross at the point where internal business systems link up with suppliers or customers.

2. What are some of the unique features of e-commerce technology?
Global reach, Richness, Interactivity, Social Technology, ect.
3. What is Web 2.0? Give examples of Web 2.0 sites and explain why you included them in your list.
Web 2.0 is a set of applications and technologies that allows users to create, edit, and distribute content online.

YouTube- people can share their videos Myspace- people participate in virtual lives
4. Give examples of B2C, B2B, C2C, and P2P Web sites besides those listed in the chapter materials.
Half.com, 58k.com, Ebay, eDonkey

5. What factors will help define the future of e-commerce over the next five years?

Expected rise in revenues for e-commerce, e-commerce prices will rise to cover business costs, e-commerce margins will rise to that of typical retailers, cast of players will change radically, and the number of succesful pure online companies will remain smaller than integrated online/offline stores