E-commerce Fundamentals: A Comprehensive Guide
TRUE/FALSE
Write ‘T’ if the statement is true and ‘F’ if the statement is false.
1) E-commerce technologies provide a unique, many-to-many model of mass communication. T
2) Ubiquity lowers the cognitive energy required to transact in a marketspace. T
3) The fact that e-commerce is conducted on the basis of universal standards increases search costs for consumers. F
4) Cost transparency refers to the ease with which consumers can find out the variety of prices in a market. T
5) Universal standards make price discovery more costly, slower, and less accurate. F
6) Personalization involves targeting marketing messages to specific individuals by adjusting the message based upon a consumer’s preferences or past purchasing behavior. T
7) The Internet is a worldwide network of computer networks. T
8) Retail e-commerce in the United States is not expected to continue growing at double-digit growth rates in 2015-2016. F
9) An asymmetry exists whenever all participants in a market have equivalent resources. F
10) First movers are often not as successful as follower firms. T
MULTIPLE CHOICE
11) E-commerce can be defined as: the use of the Internet, the Web, and mobile apps to transact business.
12) Which of the following is an example of e-business? Amazon’s inventory control system
13) Which of the following terms can be considered synonymous with the term e-commerce? digital commerce
14) Which of the following features of e-commerce technology enables merchants to market and sell “complex” goods and services to consumers via marketing messages that can integrate video, audio, and text? richness
15) Which of the following features of e-commerce technology allows users to participate in the creation of online content? social technology
16) Which of the following statements is true about the traditional tradeoff between the richness and reach of a marketing message prior to the development of the Web? The larger the audience reached, the less rich the message.
17) Interactivity in the context of e-commerce provides which of the following functionalities? the enabling of two-way communication between consumer and merchant
18) Which of the following refers to any disparity in relevant market information among parties in a transaction? information asymmetry
19) Which of the following is a physical place you visit to transact? marketplace
20) The total number of users or customers an e-commerce business can obtain is a measure of which of the following? reach
21) E-commerce is available just about everywhere and anytime. This is known as ubiquity
22) Which type of e-commerce is distinguished by the type of technology used in the transaction rather than by the nature of the market relationship? mobile e-commerce
23) Which of the following is an example of social e-commerce? Facebook
24) Which of the following is an example of C2C e-commerce? Craigslist
25) Which of the following is an example of an on-demand service company? Airbnb
26) In 2015, there were an estimated 1 billion Internet hosts.
27) All of the following can be considered a precursor to e-commerce except: the development of the smartphone.
28) Which of the following is a characteristic of e-commerce during the Invention period? disintermediation
29) Which of the following best describes the early years of e-commerce? They were a technological success but a mixed business success.
30) Which of the following was the original “killer app” that made the Internet commercially interesting and extraordinarily popular? The World Wide Web
31) Which of the following refers to the displacement of market middlemen and the creation of a new direct relationship between producers and consumers? disintermediation
32) Above all, e-commerce is a technology-driven phenomenon.
33) Which of the following is one of the three primary societal issues related to e-commerce? intellectual property
34) Which element of the business model addresses what a firm provides that other firms do not and cannot? value proposition
35) Which element of the business model refers to the presence of substitute products in the market? competitive environment
36) Which of the following are Amazon’s primary value propositions? selection and convenience
37) A firm’s revenue model describes how a firm will produce a superior return on invested capital.
38) Which of the following involves a company giving away a certain level of product or services without charge, but then charging a fee for premium levels of the product or service? freemium strategy
39) All of the following can be considered a direct or indirect competitor of Amazon except: Starbucks.
40) Organizations that typically provide an array of services to start-up companies along with a small amount of funding are referred to as: incubators.
41) eBay uses all of the following business models except: content provider.
42) A market strategy specifically details how you plan to find customers and sell your product.
43) In general, the key to becoming a successful content provider is to: own the content being provided.
44) Which type of investor typically becomes interested in a start-up company after it has begun generating revenue? venture capital investors
45) Which of the following is another name for a revenue model? financial model
46) A wealthy individual who invests personal funds in a start-up in exchange for an equity stock in the business is referred to as an angel investor
47) All of the following use an advertising revenue model except: Amazon.
48) A vertical marketplace supplies products and services of interest to particular industries.
49) Which of the following is not a primary activity in a firm value chain? finance/accounting
50) Innovative entrepreneurs and their business firms that destroy existing business models are referred to as disruptors
TRUE/FALSE
1) Packet switching does not require a dedicated circuit. T
2) IPv6 provides for 132-bit IP addresses. F
3) FTP is the protocol that provides the Internet addressing scheme. F
4) A private cloud is operated solely for the benefit of a single tenant. T
5) Amazon Web Services is an example of cloud computing. T
6) WWW is the Internet protocol used to transfer Web pages. F
7) The major hubs in the United States where the Internet backbone intersects with regional and local networks are now commonly referred to as Internet Exchange Points (IXPs). T
8) T1 and T3 refer to international telephone standards for digital communication. T
9) HTML is used to format the structure and style of a Web page. T
10) The Internet of Things is based on sensors that can collect data and connect to the Internet. T
MULTIPLE CHOICE
11) E-commerce can be defined as: the use of the Internet, the Web, and mobile apps to transact business.
12) During which period of time did the Institutionalization phase of Internet development take place? 1975-1995
13) The process of slicing digital messages into parcels, sending them along different communication paths as they become available, and reassembling them at the destination point is called: packet switching.
14) Which of the following is the core communications protocol for the Internet? TCP/IP
15) The Transport Layer of TCP/IP is responsible for which of the following? providing communication with the application by acknowledging and sequencing the packets to and from the application
16) The Internet Layer of TCP/IP is responsible for which of the following? addressing, packaging, and routing messages
17) An IPv4 address is expressed as a: 32-bit number that appears as a series of four separate numbers separated by periods.
18) The domain name system allows a natural language expression, such as Google.com, to represent a numeric IP address.
19) The address used by a browser to identify the location of content on the Web is called: a uniform resource locator.
20) Cloud computing is a model of computing in which computer processing, storage, software, and other services are provided as a shared pool of virtualized resources over the Internet.
21) Which of the following refers to delays in messages caused by the uneven flow of information packets through the network? latency
22) Which of the following protocols is used to send mail to a server? IMAP
23) Ping is a utility program that allows you to check the connection between your client and a server.
24) Which of the following technologies has enabled the Internet to grow exponentially to support millions of users, without overloading the network architecture? client/server computing
25) Telnet is used to allow remote login on another computer.
26) Which of the following are specialized computers that interconnect the thousands of computers that make up the Internet to transmit message parcels along available communication paths and on to their destinations? routers
27) Which of the following is a set of rules for transferring data? protocol
28) Which of the following are central directories that list all domain names currently in use for specific domains? root servers
29) Which of the following was the original purpose of the Internet? to link large mainframe computers on different college campuses
30) The Web runs in which layer of Internet architecture? Applications layer
31) When talking about the physical elements of the Internet, the term redundancy refers to: multiple duplicate devices and paths in a network built so that data can be rerouted if a breakdown occurs.
32) The Internet Society is a consortium of corporations, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations that monitors Internet policies and practices.
33) What type of Internet access technology are Google and Facebook hoping to use to provide Internet access to remote parts of the world? drones
34) Which of the following is not a limitation of the current Internet? the difficulty in expanding capacity by adding servers and clients
35) Which of the following statements about fiber-optic cable is not true? As of 2014, a majority of U.S. homes have fiber connections.
36) The major technologies used with wireless local area networks are: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
37) The first Web browser to make it possible to view documents on the Web with colored background, images, and animations was: Mosaic.
38) Which of the following is currently the most popular Web browser? Internet Explorer
39) Cortana is a type of: intelligent personal assistant.
40) Which of the following is a Web application that enables Internet users to communicate with each other, although not in real time? online forum
41) A(n) wiki is a Web application that allows users to easily add and edit content on a Web page.
42) The protocol that enables the transmission of voice and other forms of audio communication over the Internet is called: VoIP.
43) Which source of e-commerce revenues has grown from nearly zero prior to 2007 to an estimated $128 billion in 2015? mobile B2C e-commerce
44) Which of the following is not a basic type of cloud computing service? FiOS
45) Which of the following is a utility program that allows you to track the path of a message you send from your client to a remote computer on the Internet? Tracert
46) Which of the following organizations coordinates the Internet’s systems of unique identifiers, such as IP addresses and top-level domain systems? ICANN
47) The layer of Internet architecture that ties the applications to the communications network and includes such services as security and authentication is called the: Middleware Services layer.
48) The backbone of the Internet is formed by: Tier 1 ISPs.
49) Which of the following is not true about the mobile platform? Most smartphones use Intel chips.
50) Internet traffic is predicted to do which of the following over the next five years? triple