Deck 1: Introduction to E-Commerce

Question 1

Which of the following is the best definition of transaction cost?

A) the expense of changing national or regional prices
B) the cost of participating in a market
C) the cost of finding suitable products in the market
D) the cost merchants pay to bring their goods to market

Answer 1

B

Question 2

Which of the following is not a unique feature of e-commerce technology?

A) interactivity
B) social technology
C) information asymmetry
D) richness

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Which of the following features of e-commerce technology allows users to participate in the creation of online content?

A) ubiquity
B) global reach
C) information density
D) social technology

Answer 3

D

Question 4

The total number of users or customers an e-commerce business can obtain is a measure of which of the following?

A) ubiquity
B) interactivity
C) reach
D) information density

Question 5

Which of the following can be considered synonymous with the term e-commerce?

A) e-business
B) digital commerce
C) the Internet
D) the Web

Question 6

The costs incurred by merchants in having to change product prices (such as the costs of reentering prices into computer systems) are referred to as which of the following?

A) subscription costs
B) fixed costs
C) menu costs
D) variable costs

Question 7

E-commerce and e-business systems blur together at the business firm boundary, where internal business systems link up with suppliers or customers.

Question 8

Which of the following refers to any disparity in relevant market information among parties in a transaction?

A) information asymmetry
B) unfair competitive advantage
C) imperfect competition
D) dynamic pricing

Question 9

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?

A) Marketing messages had little richness.
B) The smaller the audience reached, the less rich the message.
C) The larger the audience reached, the less rich the message.
D) Richness was unrelated to reach.

Question 10

Which of the following is an example of e-business?

A) Amazon's inventory control system
B) the Amazon.com website
C) an Amazon mobile app
D) Amazon's Pinterest page

Question 11

What is the key factor in determining if a transaction is "commerce"?

Question 12

The term e-commerce refers to the digital enabling of business processes both inside and outside the firm.

Question 13

E-commerce can be defined as:

A) digitally enabled commercial transactions between and among organizations and individuals.
B) the use of digital technologies in a firm's daily activities.
C) the digital enablement of transactions and processes within an organization.
D) any electronically based organizational activity that supports a firm's market exchanges.

Question 14

Which of the following features of e-commerce technology is related to the concept of network externalities?

A) richness
B) interactivity
C) universal standards
D) information density

Question 15

The world's online population was estimated to be around ________ in 2019.

A) 380 million
B) 3.8 billion
C) 38 billion
D) 380 billion

Question 16

Which of the following is a physical place you visit in order to transact?

A) marketspace
B) marketplace
C) social network
D) the Internet

Question 17

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?

A) richness
B) ubiquity
C) information density
D) personalization

Question 18

E-commerce is available just about everywhere and anytime. This is known as:

A) richness.
B) information density.
C) ubiquity.
D) reach.

Question 19

Interactivity in the context of e-commerce provides which of the following functionalities?

A) the ability to physically touch and manipulate a product
B) complexity and content of a message
C) the ability of consumers to create and distribute content
D) the enabling of two-way communication between consumer and merchant

Question 20

Which of the following refers to the complexity and content of a message?

A) richness
B) reach
C) information density
D) interactivity

Question 21

All of the following are platforms for C2C e-commerce except:

A) Walmart
B) Facebook Marketplace
C) Craigslist
D) Etsy

Question 22

Which of the following is not true about the use of apps?

A) Users spend nearly 90% of their smartphone app minutes using their top five apps.
B) Users still spend less time using apps than they do using desktops or mobile websites.
C) Apps are easier to control and monetize than websites.
D) Users typically use about 20 different apps per month.

Question 23

Universal standards make price discovery more costly, slower, and less accurate.

Question 24

Which of the following is an example of an on-demand service company?

A) YouTube
B) Airbnb
C) Tumblr
D) Facebook

Question 25

All of the following statements about e-commerce in the United States in 2018 are true except:

A) social e-commerce generated more revenue than mobile e-commerce.
B) mobile advertising accounted for over 70% of all digital advertising spending.
C) on-demand service firms fueled the growth of local e-commerce.
D) growth rates for retail e-commerce were higher in the Middle East than in the United States.

Question 26

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?

A) consumer-to-consumer (C2C)
B) social e-commerce
C) mobile e-commerce
D) business-to-business (B2B)

Question 27

B2B e-commerce is the largest type of e-commerce.

Question 28

The fact that e-commerce is conducted based on universal standards decreases search costs for consumers.

Question 29

Why study e-commerce?

Question 30

Which of the following is a leading platform for social e-commerce?

A) Amazon
B) eBay
C) Wikipedia
D) Facebook

Question 31

How has e-commerce changed the marketing of goods?

Question 32

Personalization involves targeting marketing messages to specific individuals by adjusting the message based upon a consumer's preferences or past purchasing behavior.

Question 33

Which of the following is a platform for B2B e-commerce?

A) Airbnb
B) Facebook
C) Groupon
D) Go2Paper

Question 34

In 2018, about ________ of Americans accessed the Internet solely via a mobile device.

A) 8%
B) 16%
C) 28%
D) 34%

Question 35

Ubiquity increases the cognitive energy required to transact in a marketspace.

Question 36

Identify the eight unique features of e-commerce technology and explain how these features set e-commerce apart from more traditional ways of conducting commercial transactions.

Question 37

All of the following are examples of social networks except:

A) Instagram.
B) Twitter.
C) Y Combinator.
D) Pinterest.

Question 38

E-commerce technologies provide a unique, many-to-many model of mass communication.

Question 39

Business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce in the world:

A) will grow at double-digit rates between 2018 and 2023.
B) has less revenue than C2C e-commerce.
C) now constitutes over 50% of the overall world retail market.
D) is growing more slowly as it confronts its own fundamental limitations.

Question 40

Price transparency refers to the ease with which consumers can find out what merchants pay for products.

Question 41

Which of the following is a characteristic of e-commerce during the Invention period?

A) mobile technology
B) earnings and profit emphasis
C) disintermediation
D) extensive government surveillance

Question 42

Which of the following statements about the Web is not true?

A) The Web is the technology upon which the Internet is based.
B) The Web was the original "killer app."
C) The Web provides access to pages written in Hypertext Markup Language.
D) The Web is both a communications infrastructure and an information storage system.

Question 43

Which of the following best describes the early years of e-commerce?

A) They were a technological success but a mixed business success.
B) They were a technological success but a business failure.
C) They were a technological failure but a business success.
D) They were a mixed technological and business success.

Question 44

In which year can e-commerce be said to have begun?

A) 1983
B) 1985
C) 1995
D) 2001

Question 45

Which of the following is not a characteristic of a perfect competitive market?

A) Price, cost, and quality information are equally distributed.
B) A nearly infinite set of suppliers compete against one another.
C) Customers have access to all relevant information worldwide.
D) It is highly regulated.

Question 46

All of the following were visions of e-commerce expressed during the early years of e-commerce except:

A) a nearly perfect information marketspace.
B) friction-free commerce.
C) disintermediation.
D) fast follower advantage.

Question 47

Which of the following is not a major business trend in e-commerce in 2019-2020?

A) Mobile e-commerce continues to grow.
B) Retail e-commerce revenues exceed B2B e-commerce revenues for the first time.
C) On-demand service companies garner multibillion-dollar valuations.
D) Social e-commerce continues to grow.

Question 48

In 2019, there were more than ________ Internet hosts.

A) 1 million
B) 10 million
C) 100 million
D) 1 billion

Question 49

Unfair competitive advantages occur when:

A) one competitor has an advantage that others cannot purchase.
B) market middlemen are displaced.
C) information is equally distributed and transaction costs are low.
D) firms are able to gather monopoly profits.

Question 50

All of the following are major social trends in e-commerce in 2018-2019 except for:

A) concerns about the flood of temporary, poorly paid jobs without benefits being generated by on-demand service companies.
B) concerns over commercial and governmental privacy invasion.
C) concerns about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that online businesses do not need to collect state sales tax.
D) concerns about the increasing market dominance of Facebook, Amazon, and Google.

Question 51

Which of the following statements about the mobile platform is not true?

A) Over 91% of Americans used a mobile device to access the Internet at least some of the time in 2018.
B) Over 212 million Americans were mobile only Internet users in 2018.
C) M-commerce purchases were expected to reach almost $280 billion in 2018.
D) The time U.S. adults spend using mobile apps accounts for over 60% of total digital minutes spent.

Question 52

Which of the following is not a major technology trend in e-commerce in 2018-2019?

A) Mobile messaging services are now used by almost two-thirds of smartphone users.
B) Firms are turning to business analytics to make sense out of big data.
C) Smart speakers provide an additional platform for e-commerce.
D) Growth of the Internet of Things slows down.

Question 53

All of the following are issues facing Pinterest except:

A) copyright infringement.
B) inability to retain users.
C) spam.
D) scams.

Question 54

All of the following are examples of Web 2.0 sites and applications except:

A) photo-sharing sites.
B) blogs.
C) wikis.
D) auction sites.

Question 55

The early years of e-commerce are considered:

A) the most promising time in history for the successful implementation of first mover advantages.
B) an economist's dream come true, where for a brief time, consumers had access to all relevant market information and transaction costs plummeted.
C) a stunning technological success as the Internet and the Web increased from a few thousand to billions of e-commerce transactions per year.
D) a dramatic business success as 85% of dot-coms formed since 1995 became flourishing businesses.

Question 56

________ was the first truly large-scale digitally enabled transaction system in the B2C arena.

A) Telex
B) The Baxter Healthcare system
C) The French Minitel
D) Eelectronic Data Interchange (EDI)

Question 57

The early years of e-commerce were driven by all of the following factors except:

A) an emphasis on exploiting traditional distribution channels.
B) a huge infusion of venture capital funds.
C) an emphasis on quickly achieving very high market visibility.
D) visions of profiting from new technology.

Question 58

Which of the following describes the basic web policy of large firms during the Invention period?

A) Integrate social networks and the mobile platform with website marketing.
B) Emphasize the necessity for the Web to generate profits.
C) Use the Web to sell complex goods and services online.
D) Maintain a basic, static website depicting the firm's brand.

Question 59

It is estimated that by 2022, the size of the B2B market will reach:

A) $730 million.
B) $7.3 billion.
C) $730 billion.
D) $7.3 trillion.

Question 60

All of the following can be considered a precursor to e-commerce except:

A) the development of the smartphone.
B) Baxter Healthcare's PC-based remote order entry system.
C) the French Minitel.
D) the development of Electronic Data Interchange standards.

Question 61

Describe the visions and forces during the early days of e-commerce in terms of what the various interest groups hoped for: the computer science and information technology people; the economists; and the entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and marketers. Explain whether what each group envisioned came to fruition and why or why not.

Question 62

Which of the following is an example of an e-commerce first mover that failed?

A) Etsy
B) eToys
C) eBay
D) E*Trade

Question 63

The emergence of mobile, social, and local e-commerce occurred during the Consolidation period of e-commerce.

Question 64

The Reinvention period of e-commerce is as much a sociological phenomenon as it is a technological or business phenomenon.

Question 65

Which of the following refers to the practice of researching a product online before purchasing it at a physical store?

A) zooming
B) grazing
C) showrooming
D) webrooming

Question 66

Price dispersion has been eliminated in e-commerce

Question 67

Which of the following is not true regarding e-commerce today?

A) Economists' visions of a friction-free market have not been realized.
B) Consumers are less price-sensitive than expected.
C) There remains considerable persistent price dispersion.
D) The market middlemen disappeared.

Question 68

The Internet is a worldwide system of computer networks.

Question 69

Which of the following is a characteristic of the Consolidation phase of e-commerce?

A) predominance of pure online strategies
B) emphasis on revenue growth versus profits
C) brand extension and strengthening becomes more important than creating new brands
D) shift to a technology-driven approach

Question 70

Which of the following statements is not true?

A) Information asymmetries are continually being introduced by merchants and marketers.
B) Intermediaries have not disappeared.
C) Overall transaction costs have dropped dramatically.
D) Brands remain very important in e-commerce.

Question 71

Which of the following is not an element of friction-free commerce?

A) Information is equally distributed.
B) Transaction costs are high.
C) Prices can be dynamically adjusted to reflect actual demand.
D) Unfair competitive advantages are eliminated.

Question 72

Which of the following refers to the displacement of market middlemen and the creation of a new direct relationship between producers and consumers?

A) network effect
B) disintermediation
C) friction-free commerce
D) first mover advantage

Question 73

Which of the following is a characteristic of the Reinvention phase of e-commerce?

A) massive proliferation of dot-com start-ups
B) widespread adoption of broadband networks
C) rapid growth of search engine advertising
D) expansion of e-commerce to include services as well as goods

Question 74

Which business application is associated with the technological development of local area networks and client/server computing?

A) transaction automation (e.g., payroll)
B) desktop automation (e.g., word processing)
C) industrial system automation (e.g., supply chain management)
D) workgroup automation (e.g., document sharing)

Question 75

Which of the following was the original "killer app" that made the Internet commercially interesting and extraordinarily popular?

A) e-commerce
B) The Web
C) social networks
D) mobile apps

Question 76

The Internet has shown similar growth patterns as other electronic technologies of the past.

Question 77

Above all, e-commerce is a ________ phenomenon.

A) technology driven
B) finance-driven
C) sociological
D) government-driven

Question 78

Retail e-commerce in the United States is not expected to continue growing at double-digit growth rates in 2019-2020.

Question 79

Which of the following is an important societal issue related to e-commerce?

A) consumer behavior
B) value webs
C) cloud computing
D) intellectual property

Question 80

What is a first mover? Why was being a first mover considered to be important during the early years of e-commerce?