Questions and Answers of Principles Information Systems

Search online to find estimates of the current highest paying cost per click. Which keywords pay the most? Why do you think firms are willing to spend so much?
Google is in an especially strong position when compared to other ad networks and online advertising competitors. Which sources of competitive advantage accrue to the firms that dominate ad networks?
Google offers several programs to learn more about their products and to become certified.If you’re interested in digital marketing, you can explore some of these programs online.You can also apply
Visit a financial website with a free charting service, like finance.yahoo.com, and create a chart showing the performance of Microsoft compared with Google for the duration of time that Google has
Watch this video on how 3D printing is spurring advances in manufacturing. How are technologies like this poised to influence the economy, society, and the jobs of the future? Work with classmates to
Research online to investigate how tech firms fared during the pandemic. Which ones benefited?Which struggled and why? How has tech influenced our lives during the pandemic?Which trends are likely to
Survey the class—has anyone used Walmart.com (or the prior effort known as Jet.com)?How has their use compared with their Amazon purchases? What factors explain Walmart's e-commerce performance? Do
Is there such a thing as the first-mover advantage? Why or why not?
What are Porter’s “five forces”?
Build a chart with columns for traditional grocers, Instacart, and FreshDirect. Add rows showing various advantages to the firm and consumer and use the row/column intersection to show whether the
FreshDirect uses some third-party software, like the customer profiling tool Selligent, that other firms can also buy and use. Why is it less threatening if an online grocery newcomer uses the same
What problems did FreshDirect encounter when switching from Queens to the new Bronx facility?
What steps could have been taken to avoid these problems?
How did FreshDirect regain customer trust? Discuss the cost/benefit trade-off of this approach versus doing nothing.
What did the Splunk tool provide for the FreshDirect team?
What challenges and opportunities were presented by the coronavirus pandemic, and in what ways did FreshDirect capitalize on these—both financially and nonfinancially?
Why are new, nontraditional competitors more of a potential threat to FreshDirect than area retail grocers? What advantages do they bring to the market, and what assets does FreshDirect still have to
Consider the video above, "Zara AR Studio Collection." What do you think of this effort? Is this useful? A gimmick? Would it prompt you to download the app, visit the firm, or engage and discover
Survey your class, friends, or family. How many subscription services do they have and how many are they likely to have in the future? Have you or any relatives or friends ever dropped a service?
What “class” of software does Netflix use to make movie recommendations? Think about Chapter 2: Which key competitive resource does this software “create”? What kinds of benefits does this
Watch this presentation below by Caitlin Smallwood, VP of data science and analytics at Netflix, especially beginning at around the 11 min mark. What are the stages where Netflix uses data for
Why is Moore’s Law slowing? How was Apple to achieve results that were so significant when it launched the M1 chip? Which sorts of devices was the core technology in the M1 chip originally
What is the difference between volatile and nonvolatile memory? Give examples of each, noting any products that you or your family might own.
Which commercial solutions, described in the previous section, are currently being used to counteract the forces mentioned? How do these solutions work? What are the limitations of each?
Watch the video below, which appeared in a recent issue of Scientific American online. This call-to-action suggests that we are underestimating the implications of quantum computing, and the related
You can join a grid, too! Visit the SETI@home website (http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/).What is the purpose of the SETI@Home project? How do you participate? Is there any possible danger to your
What is “Moore’s Wall”?
Research the role of technologies listed as potentially disruptive in the list in this section, or identify additional potentially disruptive technologies. How do these technologies fit with the
Play the role of an industry analyst or consultant. Identify a potentially disruptive technology and make predictions on its likelihood, timeline, and industries that it will impact. Make
Consider the success of Amazon. Is it a firm that should be more regulated? Why or why not? What are the potential positive and negative consequences of this? Many cry “break up Amazon,” but if
As a longer assignment, watch the PBS Frontline documentary below: “Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos.” Use this to frame your thoughts on this chapter. Is Amazon a good or bad
What are private-label products, and what advantages do they offer Amazon? Some critics of tech-firm growth have pointed to private label products on Amazon as an increasing threat. Do you think such
Describe how Amazon Marketplace offers two-sided network effects. What are the two“sides,” and why is this a source of sustainable advantage for Amazon?
How does technology help in improving the firm’s fulfillment network? What is the role of data in these efforts? How do apps and websites help the firm roll out a UPS-rivaling fulfillment network
What role will technologies such as machine learning and other AI play fur the future of Amazon package delivery? How has Amazon acquired this data, and why does ownership of data present a challenge
Have you shopped in a checkout-free grocery store like Amazon Go or Amazon Fresh? If so, share your experience with your class. What did you like about it, and did you find anything frustrating?
Why is Amazon licensing its Amazon Go technology? How will this help the firm other than by bringing in additional revenues? Who was the first licensee of this technology, and why was it appealing to
How does Amazon Fresh use technology to improve the shopping experience? What kind of technology is involved? What is the potential payoff of this tech to both Amazon and for customers?
Why is e-ink useful in an e-reader?
Investigate the Amazon Halo. Would you buy the product (or do you or anyone else that you know already own one)? Why or why not (and what do owners think)? What would compel you to try such a
Why do Amazon Alexa-based products improve over time? What scale- and time-derived advantage does Amazon leverage in realizing this improvement?
What businesses has Amazon created from its initial Echo/Alexa product? How are businesses using Alexa?
Ask your class for opinions on the use of Alexa-style always-on microphones. What is the breakdown of people who are so concerned that they will never use these products versus those who are
What are the advantages and disadvantages of cloud gaming platforms. Do some research yourself. Do you believe these platforms are an attractive alternative to game consoles? How about the market for
Consider the eBook publishing case between Amazon and Apple, as well as the spat between Amazon and Hachette. Research the current state of these disputes and any court rulings. Is Amazon a monopoly?
Try It Out! You can build an Alexa Skill without any programming. Experiment with Alexa Blueprints or similar offering (https://blueprints.amazon.com/). Work individually or as a team to develop a
What other consumer cloud services does Amazon offer? Make a list of popular consumer cloud services that you use that are provided by Amazon, and those that you use that aren’t Amazon services.
List rival products to the cloud services that you use. Why have you chosen to use the products in your list versus rival offerings?
How big is AWS? How does AWS compare with revenue and profit versus Amazon’s e-commerce business?
Investigate and build a list of ten firms you find impressive that are using AWS. Include at least two firms that you might consider to be Amazon rivals.
List the reasons why an organization would choose cloud computing. Why might they not choose to use cloud computing?
Why would an Amazon rival choose to use AWS services when rival offerings are available?
What strategic resources has Amazon as an early mover in cloud computing services?
Research cloud computing outages among major cloud service providers (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google). Have you found any cloud computing outages that have taken place in the last three years? What
What is an instance? What is a virtual server?
What is the difference between an EC2 instance and a Lambda?
What is S3? What is Redshift? Why would an organization use these services?
Research some of the AI services available from Amazon. Make a list of five to ten of those you find most interesting, describe what they do and why these seem appealing. Investigate industries
Try it out! Create a free AWS account, then visit Amazon’s hands-on tutorials at: https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/hands-on/ Some of these courses take only ten minutes to complete and use
Investigate how Roblox has done since its public offering. Has the firm been able to realize growth in its core and new markets? Why or why not?
Investigate the state of AR and VR. What will it take for these platforms to become more popular? How might the rise of low-cost, high-quality AR/VR headsets impact other industries for platform
What is the difference between same-side exchange benefits and cross-side exchange benefits?
What is the difference between a one-sided market and a two-sided market?
As a student in a management course, dive into the political and social criticism of tech giants. Investigate key points made by differing perspectives. Some examples might include:
How did Zoom leverage subsidies to grow and jump-start network effects?
Why is viral adoption especially important to Uber and Roblox?
Zoom’s dominance of online video meetings was not predicted. Many would have thought its leadership in this space unlikely. What other firms had advantages over Zoom at the start of COVID-19?
How did Zoom win? What had it done “right” when compared with rivals? How did it quickly grow market share and take advantage of network effects?
Do you think Zoom would be the dominant firm in online meetings today without COVID-19?Why or why not?
How did Zoom respond when faced with crises? What characteristics helped the firm address unforeseen issues as they arose?
Identify another firm or firms that quickly gained network effects when, on the surface, it would seem other firms were positioned to dominate the market. Why did these firms win?What aspects were
What comprises the Internet backbone?
What are Web services? Give an example of a Web service.
Use the Help function of Excel to learn more about the Excel Scenario Manager and the Excel Solver Add-in.
Figure 1.13 presents the occupational outlook (median salary and number of job openings) for selected information systems positions. Obtain data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and use a
Computerworld does an annual survey to identify the top-ranked places to work as an IS professional. Go online to find the results of the latest survey. What makes these places so attractive? Are
What is an information system? What is the role of feedback in a system?
What are some of the characteristics of a virtual team?
What is meant by continuous improvement?
What is a virtual machine?
Identify and briefly describe the various classes of single-user, mobile computers.
Define the term “green computing,” and state its primary goals.
Outline how the Electronic Product Environment Assessment Tool (EPEAT) can be used for rating computers.
Distinguish between proprietary software and off-the-shelf software.
What is middleware?
What is software as a service (SaaS)?
What is meant by client/server architecture? Describe how this architecture works.
Briefly describe how the Internet works.
What is Enterprise 2.0 and how is it used?
Briefly describe the differences between a credit, charge, debit and smart card.
Provide a definition of business analytics.
What is drill-down analysis and how is it used?
What is organizational network analysis? How is it used?
What is the difference between file conversion and file compression?
What is a genetic algorithm? Give an example of the use of a genetic algorithm.
What is informatics?
What is BYOD? What security issues does it raise?
What is a zero-day attack?
What is the CAN-SPAM Act? What is CAPTCHA?
Explain how a distributed denial-of-service attack works.

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