Q1: How do companies use e-commerce?
E-commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services through public and private computer networks. On e-commerce activity, merchant companies are defined as those that take title to the goods they sell; they buy goods and resell them. Nonmerchant companies are those that arrange for the purchase and sale of goods without ever owning or taking title to those goods.
There are three main types of merchant companies, which are: those that sell directly to consumers (B2C), those that sell to companies (B2B), and those that sell to government (B2G).
There are also three types of nonmerchant e-commerce companies. E-commerce auctions match buyers and sellers by using an e-commerce version of a standard auction (eBay). Clearinghouses provide goods and services at a stated price and arrange for the delivery of the goods, but they never take title. An electronic exchange is another type of clearinghouse but it matches buyers and sellers-the process is similar to that of a stock exchange.
E-commerce improves market efficiency by leading to disintermediation, which is the elimination of middle layers of distributors and suppliers. Flow of price information is also improved. From the seller’s side, e-commerce provides information about price elasticity (measure of amount that demand rises or falls with changes in price) that has not been available before.
Economic factors that disfavor e-commerce are channel conflict, price conflict, logistics expense, and customer-service expense.
Q2: What technology is needed for e-commerce?
Almost all e-commerce applications use the three-tier architecture. The three tiers refer to three different classes of computers. The user tier consists of computers that have browsers that request and process web pages. The server tier consists of computers that run Web servers and process application programs. The database tier consists of computers that run a DBMS that processes SQL requests to retrieve and store data.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a protocol that is a set of rules for transferring documents and data over the internet. A web page is a document, coded in one of the standard page markup languages, that is transmitted using HTTP. Web servers are programs that run on a sever tier computer and that manage HTTP traffic by sending and receiving Web pages to and from clients. A browser is a computer program on the client computer that processes Web pages. A commerce server is an application program that runs on a server tier computer; it receives requests from users via the Web server.
A Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) tag is a notation used to define a data element for display or other purposes. Hyperlinks are pointers to other Web pages; they contain the URL of the Web page to find when the user clicks the hyperlink.
Q3: How can information systems enhance supply chain performance?
A supply chain is a network of organizations and facilities that transforms raw materials into products delivered to customers. At each level an organization can work with many organizations both up and down the supply chain, a supply chain is a network. Four factors that driver supply chain performance are: facilities, inventory, transportation, and information. Supply chain profitability is the difference between the sum of the revenue generated by the supply chain and the sum of the costs that all organizations in the supply chain incur to obtain that revenue. The bullwhip effect is when the variability in the size and timing of orders increases at each stage up the supply chain, from customer to supplier.
Q4: Why is Web 2.0 important to business?
It refers to a loose grouping of capabilities, technologies, business models, and philosophies. Many Web 2.0 programs are classified as “beta” –a pre-release version of software that is used for testing; it becomes obsolete when the final version is released. Businesses can benefit from this because it promotes advertising, social networking, and mashups.
Q5: How can organizations benefit from social networking?
Social Networking is the interaction of people connected by friendship, interests, business associations, or some other common trait that is supported by Web 2.0 technology. Social network applications are computer programs that interact and process information in a social network. They run on servers provided by the application’s creator.
Q6: How can organizations benefit from Twitter?
Twitter allows users to publish 140 character descriptions of anything. They can follow other Twitter users, and they can be followed. It is an example of a category of applications called microblogs, a web site on which users can publish their opinions, just like a web blog, but the opinions are restricted to small amounts of text, like Twitter’s 140 characters. Benefits from this are market research, relationship sales, and public relations.
Q7: What are the benefits and risks of user-generated content (UGC)?
Most common types of UGC are: ratings and surveys, opinions, customer stories, discussion groups, wikis, blogs, and video. Crowdsourcing is the process by which organizations involve their users in the design and marketing of their products. It combines social networking, viral marketing, and open-source design, saving considerable cost while cultivating customers. Risks of using social networking and UGC are: junk and crackpots, inappropriate content, unfavorable reviews, mutinous movements, and dependency on the SN vendor.
Q8: 2020?
Perhaps the future technology will enable voice and video to be integrated into social networking. Perhaps with social networking, management styles will change and instead of only being able to manage 10 to 12 employees, managers will be in charge of 50 or 100.
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