BIS 270 Midterm Exam Study Set

Did you watch the Podium presentation? And did you come to class on Monday? Here is where the join of the ideas comes in. First of all, we might note as the group did that Podium is at least a partial __________ (three letter acronym for an application focusing on customer interaction). Secondly, if Podium is used on another company/service site, I might worry about the probability that some of the customer feedback isn't authentic, and thus might lead to what your chapter referred to as ______________ (regarding feedback/reviews).

1) CRM (Customer Relationship Management) 2) Astroturfing

Tech firms are among the best performing firms in the world. According to the chapter, which firm is the most valuable firm in the United States, and has also posted some of the most profitable quarters of any business in any industry?

Apple

Hats off to the Qlik Sense presentation. They talked UX and BI, but the real thing that makes Qlik (and their competitor Tableau) so powerful, are the way they create visualizations from data that exists. They do this through connecting to the source date (prior to analyzing) through what? Hint, three letter. Extra Hint: some of you guessed this as the incorrect answer to last week's three-letter question. Make sure you write the acronym/letters and then tell me what it stands for in full words.

API (Application Program Interface)

What are Porter's five forces?

Competition in the industry Potential of new entrants Power of suppliers Power of customers Threat of substitute products

We talked about API's and we talked about Coopetition. One of the reasons that these businesses and tech-software/services work so well together, especially the ones that use the API framework to add value to the overall platform is that they have what is called

Complementary benefits

Which of the following statements about technology is true?

D. Technology plays a marginal role in creating strategic differences. (C.) Technological improvements can often be copied by rivals, leading to a profit-eroding arms race. E. Technology cannot be used by late entrants to gain a share of the industry. B. Technology alone is enough to provide sustainable competitive advantage to a firm. A. Technological improvements are not important in strengthening a firm's strategic advantages.

From the Bourgeois reading, the physical components of the technology like keyboards, flash drives and monitors are all examples of information systems ____________

Hardware

The Tableau presentation, amongst other great things, referenced _________ as a multi-product or multi-revenue-stream approach to doing business. We learned about this concept originally in the Fresh Direct case study a few weeks ago. Do you feel that this group (Tableau) got omni-channel right?

I think Tabeleau did get the omni-channel approach right because for over ten years they've been the leader in business analytics and intelligence.

Choose the correct answer: Why is the "First Sale Doctrine," including understanding when it does and doesn't apply, relevant to Netflix?

In cases of streaming media, it facilitates a shift of bargaining power to content suppliers.

We talked about integrated solutions in class with regard to vertical integration of manufacturing. This applies to information system v.i. as a solution that combines

Data, People, Process, and Hardware/Software

The Wix presentation hit on a number of terms, one being the downside of a long-tail platform or service. What was this term that was familiar to us from the Netflix discussion?

Decision fatigue: customers get too overwhelmed with choices

Noted in the discussion the other day with Julie Navickas, some companies/institutions decide to granulate their social media presence (e.g. Illinois State has many different department, division, college, etc.) accounts for social. Others choose to have one large account without the granulation. This is known as the ___________ approach.

Embassy

When I think of SLACK, I think of a niche market or something that is branded to be truly for "the cool mom's" of the technology world. When I think of Microsoft Teams (and not alone here) I think of a corporate behemoth and something that is not as cool. But in the presentation here, the group points out two things about the difference and the dominance. What is the Porter's Power Tool mentioned that shows why MS Teams might be ahead of SLACK in this market?

MS Teams has drastically more active daily users compared to Slack. In 2022, Teams has 270 million active daily users while Slack has 25.7 million. Teams seems to be more efficient because you're able to bundle Teams with Microsoft's many different software (Outlook, Word, Excel, etc.) Slack is compatible with their own applications and Google applications (Sheets, Docs, etc.) Teams is more popular in larger organizations while Slack is more popular in smaller, startup organizations.

Julie - our guest speaker - also mentioned some of the corporate partnerships and divisional partnerships that ISU has through the SMACC Lab. In doing this, she advises both groups on those 4 M's of social media. We noted during the discussion these include all of the following EXCEPT...

Magnet Monitoring (ANSWER) Maximizing Mediation Megaphone

e-commerce strategy that Zara uses that blends online and offline sales is called_____________.

Omnichannel

Square had the terms galore - right? What is that three-letter acronym that tells us both what its primary use is, and also where it collects information and payment? Also, that guy on the history page...he was pretty responsible for another large tech giant, right? Who was he and what is the other tech gargantuan for which he is credited starting...and then selling in the last 24 months?

POS (Point of Sale) His name is Jack Dorsey and he sold Twitter (now known as X).

According to the Bourgeois text, Business IT includes which (answer) of the following?

Process, People, Software, Data, and Hardware

Fresh Direct worked in New York (and the surrounding area) not only because of an adoption of app-based technology, but what your author refers to as _____________. This includes the mobility of northeasterners, the capacity to carry groceries, and even apartment/kitchen sizes

Product-market fit

Which of the following statements is a valid reason for chip manufacturers to carry minimal inventory?

Products with a significant chip-based component rapidly fall in value and can cause huge losses when overproduced.

Our guest speaker from the SMACC lab at ISU here talked about how some people are doing analytics, but some are focusing just on the listening. The SMACC is probably the closest to our chapter 10 term _____________.

SMART

The _____ is a piece of U.S. legislation that raises executive and board responsibility and ties criminal penalties to certain accounting and financial violations.

Sarbanes-Oxley Act

The concept of taking your iPad/mobile/etc. to a physical store so you can feel and see the real product, but then using the device to seek out a better deal is commonly known as...

Showrooming

Have been thinking about Tony's Tacos since we left class Monday - and clearly DStory was clearly having what one might call an "off-night." That said, Tony's might not have a scale advantage, but how might either omnichannel or vertical integration look for that eatery? Be specific but brief on how they would take advantage of technology and or process in establishing competitive advantage using either omnichannel or vertical integration.

Tony's Tacos can make an app that allows mobile ordering. The app could be compatible with other apps such as UberEats in order to make more deliveries. The mobile app could also have a reward system to bring back customers.

We formalized a bit that term Network Effects this week in the Asynch by talking about not only the data, but Metcalfe's Law. Metcalf essentially claims that...

Value is a product of users

One thing that stood out in the Shopify presentation included (much more than this, but trying to be fair with a shorter question here) a term that sounded like "wizzy-wig" but was spelled different and stood for something. What was that term, what did it stand for, and how does it fit within the strategic philosophy of Shopify? A few sentences here will do.

WYSIWYG - meaning What You See Is What You Get. This fits with Shopify's strategic philosophy because there's no coding required when building the websites. This makes the site very easy to use because users just have to drag and drop headers, footers, pictures, etc.

_____ refers to performing different tasks than rivals or the same tasks in a different way.

Strategic positioning

In the Qualtrics presentation, they mentioned the IPO, they mentioned the competition, but the focus of this question is more about the experience. Noted were several types of XM (similar to UX, but also different). What were those four types of XM, and tell me a little about how that is similar to UX. 3-4 sentences will do here.

The four types of XM are Brand Experience (BX), Product Experience (PX), Customer Experience (CX), and Employee Experience (EX). XM means Experience Management, because Qualtrics is determined to listen to customers, stakeholders, and employees for ways to improve their software. UX means User Experience, and this is where Qualtrics focuses on making the software as efficient and easy to use as possible for users,

The phrase "time-based, data-driven results" refers to which of the following?

more data collected over time, strengthens competitive advantage

Customers who owned Nintendo's 8-bit video game console were unable to play the same games on the firm's new 16-bit Super Nintendo system. There was little incentive for existing Nintendo fans to stick with the firm. In this case, Nintendo's new offering suffered from a lack of:

backward compatibility

A company uses radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to keep track of its inventory. This is an example of the impact of technology in the area of _____.

operations

Funding projects via online efforts such as Kickstarter are referred to by the term

crowdsourcing

According to your text, and maybe one of my slides, brands are built through _____.

customer experience

Find me a video online showing an online retailer using Augmented Reality. Do you feel that the app as shown (or use it and tell me about it) enhances the buyer experience and gives a realistic idea for the consumer about the expected outcome/purchase? How does this fit in with last week's concept about information symmetry?

https://youtu.be/D1C0cuOdubY?si=yQmWaZEUELiQAqJjLinks to an external site. I think AR is a unique way to get the customer interactive with their purchase. The ability for the customer to see the product on them or in their house gives a special type of bond to the product. The customer will keep this product at the top of her head when comparing with competitors who don't use AR. AR gives a realistic expectation of the product, meaning the customer will be less likely to return it. This is related to information symmetry because the AR gives more information about the product that competitors are not giving.

Video gamers may desire ____ latency in order to have a more realistic player experience.

low

The practice of windowing involves:

making content available to a distribution channel for a specified time period under a different revenue model.

The resource-based view of competitive advantage states that for a firm to maintain sustainable competitive advantage it must control a set of exploitable resources that have four critical characteristics. What are these characteristics?

rareness, value, imperfect imitability, non substitutability

Price elasticity refers to the:

rate at which demand for a product or service fluctuates with price change.

While the size of the tail in the long tail phenomenon is disputable, one fact that is critical to remain above this debate is that:

selection at least attracts customers, and the Internet allows large-selection inventory efficiencies that offline firms can't match.

Perceived switching costs may prevent a long-term FreshDirect customer from

subscribing to a rival online grocer.

Many firms have developed and deployed innovative information systems, only to see these systems go unused by key staff members. How has Zara helped ensure its systems will be used by staff?

system use drives store success and as much as 70 percent of salaries are tied to sales performance

Which of the following is the best way to attempt to regain market share after losing customers to failed technology systems?

use internal and external resources to solve the technical issues and focus on meeting the immediate needs of customers (optimization and Splunk)

Experts working in the area of _____ work to make sure systems are easy to use, while people working in the area of _____ work to leverage technology to make firms more efficient

user-interface design; process design

In an industry where nearly every major player outsources manufacturing to low-cost countries, Zara is highly _____, keeping huge swaths of its production process in-house.

vertically integrated

_____ is a nonvolatile, chip-based storage, often used in mobile phones, cameras, and MP3 players.

Flash memory

Which of the following represents one of the primary components of the value chain?

Outbound logistics

We LOVE acronyms in this class and so does Zara's tech. They use a blend of _______ and ________ to both assist customers with location and styles of items for which to shop, as well as tracking inventory and sales to determine what goods need to be replenished or are not selling as well as expected (and might call for alternative styles).

PDA's and POS's

In a two-sided market, what they mean by this is the ability to generate activity on multiple sides (like more developers want to develop for this application and more buyers want to purchase it). An example of this happening in your text is ____________

Roblox

Which of the following would be the best way to minimize the issues experienced by FreshDirect with the move to the new facility?

Roll out the new system in phases, test the increased workload, and keep the old system as a backup. (parallel testing)

Which of the following factors is responsible for enabling the advance of Moore's Law?

The distance between pathways inside silicon chips gets smaller with each successive generation.

Prada's (the story about their competitor) experiment of implementing the latest technology in its flagship store failed because:

The execution of the technological advancements was poor and didn't work well during customer interactions, so managers and staff stopped using it.

Which two of the following align with what Porter says are power tools to increase the sticky-ness of switching costs (from text and lecture) -

Brand Data Asset Crowdsourcing Reciprocal Processing Supply Chain Conflict

____________________ and ____________________ are turning sophisticated, high-powered computing into a utility available to even the smallest businesses and nonprofits.

Cloud Computing, Software as a Service

According to Michael Porter, the reason many firms suffer margin-eroding competition is because they have defined themselves according to strategic positioning rather than operational effectiveness.

False

Disrupt the market here in town for college students. Let's do a laundry delivery service with an app. Tell me what works about this and what doesn't, using your own current experience with delivery services, doing your own laundry, etc. In a couple of sentences, could an app-based laundry pick-up, wash, delivery service work? What are two key considerations to the technology and the service?

I think a laundry delivery service could work well in a town for college students. The target audience would be students in the dorm who don't want to use shared washing machines, or students in college apartments whose washing machine is broken. I think the service would run best with an app that is compatible with delivering all around campus, even the dorms. The app could even have some kind of reward system that gives discounts to returning customers. A potential issue could arise if there are difficulties getting in and out of the dorm buildings. There may also be issues differentiating the bags of laundry if more than one person is using the service at the same time. Similar to Uber and Doordash, the service would have to have a policy of lost/missing items.

If a firm uses software to collect information on applicants' demographics, and decides that the organization is not reaching applicants from diverse backgrounds (ethnicity, gender, disability, military status, etc.), and uses that information to make decisions about how they will advertise in different locations/venues, would you see this software as operational level, tactical level, or strategic level software?

I would describe this software at the tactical level because the information being found is for only one department in the business (the marketing department). The ad campaigns will run for a specified period of time, and then new information will be needed to send out the next ad campaigns.

What is a technology you use today (specific brand/company name/etc.) that you would have trouble switching to a new service/device/application? What would it take to encourage you to switch?

I would have trouble leaving Snapchat for another messaging service because Snapchat has an advantage with being able to send pictures. I use Snapchat to keep in touch with people who I don't necessarily talk to everyday, but don't want to lose touch with. We can just send pictures back and forth throughout the day. I also like that everything is time limited. I would only be encouraged to switch if Snapchat changed up their platform so much that it doesn't even give me the advantages that I want anymore.

Better to have more inventory turns? Or fewer?

More

If a new entrant hopes to attract customers from an established incumbent, the new entrant must ensure that the value they offer exceeds the incumbents' value in addition to any perceived _____.

Switching costs

Kuali - what is the threat here according to the group from Porter's forces? What is one of the advantages they have (again according to the group)?

The threat to Kuali from Porter's forces is threat of new entrants and substitute products. One of the advantages that Kuali has is switching costs.