Week 9
1

Wireless devices such as pagers, cellular telephones, organizers etc) are convenient and productive technologies that enable users to connect and access web-based information and services. They are highly applicable to business as they enable users to use their time more effectively; for example when travelling via public transportation they can spend time doing work via their mobile making calls or on the Internet.

2
Wireless transmission media/technologies include:
- Microwave: mainly used for high-volume, long-distance, line-of-sight communication. They must have an unobstructed line of sight and can be susceptible to environmental interference.
- Satellite: include three types of satellites: geostationary, medium earth orbit and low earth orbit. They normally have a high bandwidth and large coverage area. Generally, satellites can be expensive and similarly, must have unobstructed lines of sight.
- Infrared: is the red light that is not commonly visible to human eyes. It has a low to medium bandwidth and normally is used only for short distances. Similarly to the above, infrared must have an unobstructed line of sight.

3
Bluetooth is used normally as an application device for wireless handsets such as cell phones and portable music players.


5
The main drivers of mobile computing is its’ mobility and broad reach. It is mobile in the fact that users can carry a mobile device with them and initiate real-time contact with other systems from different locations. The development of mobile computing has therefore allowed businesses and individuals to engage in mobile commerce.

6
Business problems such as financial services can be solved through wireless electronic payment systems where individuals can pay for bills, products and services online. Overall, mobile technologies such mobile phones and laptops have all helped close the communication gap between businesses and their customers and suppliers.

7
Radio Frequency Identification technology (RFID) generally allows manufacturers to attach tags with antennas and computer chips on goods and then track their movement through radio signals. RFID was mainly designed to replace barcodes and to deplete the limitations barcodes posses e.g. barcodes require line of sight to the scanning device.

8
1) A rouge access point: the unauthorised access point to a wireless network.
2) War driving: the act of locating WLAN’s while driving around a city or elsewhere.
3) Eavesdropping: unauthorized access to data when traveling over wireless networks.
4) Radio frequency jamming: where a person or device intentionally or unintentionally interferes with your wireless network transmissions.

Week 10

8.1
A transactional processing is whereby data worthy of being generated is captured and stored. They are systems that monitor, collect, store, and process the above data generated from all business transactions. The key objectives are to ensure efficiency, avoid errors and downtime, record results accurately and securely, and maintain privacy and security.

8.2.1
A functional area information systems provides information mainly to lower-and-middle level managers in the functional areas. One of its’ major characteristics are its’ routine reports which range from hourly quality control reports to daily reports on absenteeism rates.

8.2.2
Functional area information systems (FAIS) support management by exception through the characteristic of exception reports which reports include only information that falls outside certain threshold standards.

8.3.1
ERP are systems, which integrate the planning, management, and use of all of an organisation’s resources. Main aim is to integrate the functional areas of the organisation and to enable information to flow seamlessly across the functional areas.

8.3.2
- They can be extremely complex
- Expensive
- Time consuming to implement
- Companies must purchase the entire software package even if they require only a few of the modules.

8.5.1
A supply chain refers to the ‘flow of materials, information, money and services from raw material suppliers, through factories and warehouses to the end customers’. The supply chain management (SCM) also reduce uncertainty and risks by decreasing inventory levels and cycle time by improving business processes and customer service.

8.5.2
The supply chain involves 3 major segments which include
1) Upstream- whereby sourcing from external suppliers occur
2) Internal- here, packaging, assemble or manufacturing take place.
3) Downstream- distribution frequently by external distributors occurs.

8.5.3
Customer demand variables can become magnified when they are viewed through the eyes of managers at each link in the supply chain. The bullwhip effect is where erratic shifts in orders up and down the supply chain take place.

8.5.4
1) Using inventories: whereby building inventories creates insurance against supply chain uncertainties
2) Information sharing: this allows to monitoring of inventory levels whereby information sharing allows the transmission of data through electronic data interchange and extranets.

8.6
Electronic data Interchange (EDI) enables business partners to exchange routine documents
Benefits of EDI include:
• It minimizes data entry errors as each entry is checked by the computer
• Also reduces cycle time, increases productivity, enhances customer service and minimizes paper usage and storage.
• The length of the message can be shorter, and the messages are secured.
Disadvantages of EDI:
• Traditional EDI system is inflexible.
• Requires a long startup period.
• It involves a significant amount of initial investment
• Operating costs are high due to the use of expensive, private VANs.

Week 11

9.1.1
The decision making process proposed by Simon involves the following four phases:
1) Intelligence: where managers examine a situation and identify and define the problem
2) Design: decision makers construct a model that simplifies the problem
3) Choice: involves selecting a solution, which is tested “on paper”
4) Implementation: is only successful if the proposed solution resolves the problem.

9.1.3
The decision matrix is composed of three broad categories and the nature of decisions can be combined in a decision support matrix that consists of nine cells.

9.2
Data mining performs two operations including predicting trends and behaviours and identifying previously unknown patterns. Data mining identifies business opportunities in a bid to create a sustainable competitive advantage.

9.3
A digital dashboard provides rapid access to timely information and direct access to management reports. Some of the capabilities associated with digital dashboards include:
- Drill-down: the ability to go to details, at several levels which can be done by a series of menus or by direct queries.
- Status access: the latest data available on KPI or some other metric, ideally in real time.
- Exception reporting: reports that highlight deviations larger than certain thresholds. Reports may include only deviations.

Week 12
Section 10.1.1
A major problems that companies face is to allocate fixed costs among different IT projects. Costs for maintaining, debugging, and improving the system can accumulate over many years.

10.1.2
- Benefits can be harder to quantify due to these benefits being in an intangible form.
- Due to the fact that organizations use IT for several different purposes complicating benefit analysis.
- As many systems in reality are not implemented on time or within budget constraints creating problems when obtaining a return from an IT investment.
- If the proposed system is ‘cutting edge’- there may be no previous evidence of what sort of financial payback the company can expect.

10.1.3
Net Present Value is used by organizations to aid cost-benefit analysis calculations. When it is implemented, analysts convert future values of benefits to their present-value equivalent by discounting them at the organisation’s cost of funds.
Return on Investment (ROI) measures management’s effectiveness in generating profits with its available assets.

10.5.1
The types of companies that provide outsourcing services are small or medium-sized companies with few IT staff and restricted budgets. Large companies may also choose to use outsourcing if for example; they might want to experiment with new IT technologies without making a substantial up-front investment.

10.5.2
Application service providers are agents or vendors who assemble the software needed by enterprises and packages the software with services such as development, operations and maintenance. Advantages include:
- Saves expenses such as labour costs in the initial development stage.
- Helps reduce the costs of software maintenance and upgrading and user training over the long run.
- The company can select another software product from the vendor to meet its changing needs.
- Makes the company more competitive be enhancing the company’s ability to adapt to changing market conditions.

10.5.3
Disadvantages include:
- ASPs might not offer adequate security protection
- Software might not be a perfect fit for the desired application.
- Company must make certain that the speed of the Internet connection between the customer and the ASP is adequate to handle the requirements of the application.

10.6.1
The major steps of selection of a vendor and a software package:
- Step 1: Identify Potential Vendors
- Step 2: Determine the evaluation criteria
- Step 3: Evaluate Vendors and Packages
- Step 4: Choose the Vendor and Package
- Step 5: Negotiate a contract
- Step 6: Establish a service level agreement.

10.6.2
A request for proposal is a document that is sent to potential vendors inviting them to submit a proposal that describes their software package and explains how it would meet the company’s needs. It provides the vendors with information about the objectives and requirements of the system.

10.6.3
Service Level agreements are formal agreements that specify how work is to be divided between the company and its vendors.

BIT part 1

Chapter 1

Q1. What are the characteristics of the modern business environment?
The characteristics of the modern business environment include the integration of management and information technology

Q2. What is meant by a web-based, global platform, what does it provide, and how has it affected business?
A web-based, global platform provides a way to communicate without boundaries. Individuals can now connect, compute, communicate, collaborate and compete everywhere and anywhere, any time and all the time. Furthermore, we can access limitless amounts of information services and entertainment, as well as exchanging knowledge producing and selling goods and services. However, web-based global platform does not just affect individuals, but has changed the way businesses operate through globalisation. Now businesses can use the World Wide Web to communicate, compete and access information on a global scale, much more efficiently than seen in the past.

Q3. What are the main pressures that characterise the modern global business environment?
There are many pressures, which characterise the modern global business environment, some of which include market pressures (involving strong competition and the global economy). Another pressure include the changing nature of the workforce where new skills have been learned, new locations have been introduced, new hours the norm, and consumers have subsequently become more powerful. Technology pressures such as innovation, which in this day and age is forever on the rise, and products and services have high obsolescence, as well as information overload (or digital obesity). Furthermore political, societal and legal spheres are additional market pressures, including social pressures such as the digital divide and terrorism where there are new ways to commit big ticket crime. Social responsibility, compliance with government rules and regulations, alongside ethical and moral issues are forever pressures within the global business environment.

Q4. What are/discuss some of the common IT orientated organisational responses to these pressures.
There are four main responses to organisational pressures
1. Strategy systems – help increase profits and/or market share, better negotiate with suppliers, or to prevent competitors from entering their markets
2. Customer focus – concentrates on exceptional customer service, specialising in services such as IT are specially designed to keep the customer satisfied and happy
3. Make-to-order and mass customisation – focusing on customised products and services at a reasonable cost to satisfy consumer’s needs and wants.
4. E-Business and E-Commerce – where business is carried out electronically.

Q5. How are IT architecture and IT infrastructure interrelated?
IT architecture integrates the information requirements of the overall organisation and the physical facilities of the IT infrastructure, which includes the IT components, services and management. IT infrastructure involves the physical facilities to carry out the IT architecture plans of information and future direction.

Q6. Is the Internet an infrastructure, an architecture, or an application program? Or something else. Why?
The Internet is a web based information tool.

Chapter 2
Q1. What is the difference between an “application” and a “computer-based information systems”?
A computer-based information system is a system that uses a computer technology to perform some or all of the untended tasks, whereas an application is a computer program designed to support a specific task or business process.

Q2. What is an information system?
The following combination of components makes up an information system, hardware, software, databases, networks (both external and internal) procedures and people

Q3. According to Porter, what are the five forces that could endanger a firm’s position in its industry or marketplaces?
Porter’s Five (5) forces:
1. “Threat of entry of new competitors” – this threat is high when it is easy to enter the market place and low when barriers to entry exist.
2. “The bargaining power of suppliers” – supplier power is high when buyers have few choices from whom to purchase goods from.
3. “Bargaining power of customer” – buyer power is high when many choices are present from whom to buy and low when buyers have fewer choices
4. “The threat of substitute products or services” – the threat is high when there are many substitutes for an organisations products or services
5. “Rivalry among existing firm in the industry” – threat is high when there is intense competition among many firms in an industry.

Q4. In relation to Porter’s value chain model, what is meant by primary activities and support activities, and how does IT support activities?
Primary activities are business activities that are related to the production and distribution of the firm’s products and services, which create value for which customers are willing to pay. These are divided into 5 primary activities:
1. Inbound logistics (inputs)
2. Operation (manufacturing and testing)
3. Outbound logistics (storage and distribution)
4. Marketing and sales
5. Services
Support activities differ to primary activities as do not add direct value to the firm’s products or services, but rather contribute to the firm’s competitive advantage by activities. Such support activities are as follows
- The firms infrastructure (accounting, finance, management)
- Human resources management
- Product and technology development
- Procurement

Q5. Discuss the logic of building information systems in accordance with the organisational hierarchical structure.
The logic of building information systems is in conformity with the organisational structure as it helps the business to collect, process, analyse, store information – with high speed and volume. With the implementation of information systems, businesses can communicate and collaborate among several organisational, increasing their sources of available information, which assists their work on a global scale.

Q6. How has the Internet affected each of the five forces in Porter’s competitive force model?
The impact of Internet has increased competition, which has a negative impact on profitability. However, it has certainly changed the nature of competition.

Tech Guide 1

Q1. What is computer hardware and what are the major hardware components?
Hardware refers to the physical equipment used for the input, processing, output and storage activities of a computer system. Examples of hardware include PC’s, Servers, Printers, Mouse’, Monitors. Major hardware components include the PC and the Motherboard. Hardware consists of
- Central processing unit (CPU)
- Primary storage
- Secondary storage
- Input technologies
- Communication technologies

Q2. What is Moore’s Law? What does it mean in relation to computers?
Gordon Moore’s Law is a prediction that the microprocessor complexity would double approximately every two years. It was estimated in 1970 that computer speed would increase 1 million times by 2000. Furthermore, computers are increasing in technology and speed, continuing to improve as an information-processing tool.

Q3. In basic terms, describe how a microprocessor functions.
The microprocessor is made up of several parts, each performing special functions. Firstly there is the Control Unit, which sequentially accesses programme instructions, decodes them and controls the flow of data to and from the Arithmetic-Logic Unit (ALU), registers, primary and secondary storage, caches and various output devices. Secondly there is the ALU, which performs all the mathematic calculations and formulae, and makes logical comparisons.

Q4. What factors determine the speed of the microprocessor?
There are several factors, which determine the speed of the microprocessor, and these are listed below:
- Line width – distance between transistors
- Word length – number of binary units (aka bits) that the CPU can process in one cycle
- Bus width – is the size of the physical paths down which data and instructions travel as electrical impulses.
- Clock speed – preset speed of the clock that times all chip activities in megahertz and gigahertz.

Q5. What are the four main types of Primary Storage?
Primary storage or main memory stores three types of information for very brief periods of time. It takes place in chips mounted on the computer’s main circuit board, called the motherboard.
- Registers: Is part of the CPU with the least capacity, storing extremely limited amounts of instructions and data only immediately before and after processing.
- Random access memory (RAM): the part of primary storage that hoods a software program and small amounts of data when they are brought from secondary storage
- Cache memory: a type of primary storage where the computer can temporarily store blocks of data used more often.
- Read-only memory: type of primary storage where certain critical instructions are safeguarded; the storage is non-volatile and retains the instructions when the power to the computer is turned off.


Q6. What are the main types of Secondary Storage?
1. Flash memory devices – such as memory cards
2. Optical storage devices – such as compact disk
3. Magnetic Media
a. Magnetic tape (sequential access)
b. Magnetic disks (direct access)

Q7. How does primary storage differ from secondary storage in terms of speed, cost and capacity?
Primary Storage Secondary Storage
Speed Data has to travel a shorter distance, thus information is processed faster Data travels longer distance, thus information is processed slower
Cost More expensive Less Expensive
Capacity Stores small amounts of data and information what the CPU will use immediately. Larger amounts of data and information for extended periods of time

Q8. What are enterprise storage systems?
Enterprise storage systems are an independent, external system, which includes two or more storage devices. These systems provide large amounts of storage, high performance data transfer, a high degree of availability, protection against data loss and sophisticated management tools.
There are three types of enterprise storage:
- Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks (RAID)
- Storage Area Network (SAN)
- Network Attached Storage (NAS)


Q9. Distinguish between human data input devices and source data automation.
Human data-entry consists of devices, including keyboards, mouse, trackball, joystick, touch screen, stylus and voice recognition, which all in turn require a certain amount of human effort; and
Source-data automation is where devices input data with minimal human intervention (e.g. barcode reader).

Q10. What is one new technology that will change how we do things?
I don’t think anyone could ever guess the success and the versatility of the MP3 player when it was first introduced to the public. Sure, it plays music from a play list of up to 20,000 songs, but you can also save movies or even documents! MP3 players change the way we socialise, learn and entertain in a way which is innovative and has not been seen since the release of CD players, or even earlier. For example, some Universities even post “pod casts” on the Internet for students unable to attend lectures, so they can listen to the class in their own time!!


Tech Guide 2

Q1. What are the main differences/distinction between system software and application software?
Systems software is a set of instructions, which mainly serves as an intermediary between application programs and computer hardware. Furthermore, systems software provides self-regulatory functions for computer systems, such as loading itself when the computer is first turned on and providing commonly used sets of instructions for all applications. This differs to application software because the latter provides more specific functionality, such as word processing.

Q2. What are the two main types of system software?
1. System control programs – control use of hardware, software and data resources of a computer system.
2. System support programs – support the operations, management and users if a computer system by providing a variety of support services.

Q3. What is the difference between proprietary and open source software? What considerations should be made when a business selects either software?
Proprietary software concerns a company’s specific or unique business need, which can be developed either in-house by the organisation’s personnel, or it could be commissioned from a software merchant. Open source software provides a code at no cost, which can be used by developers and users. This is copyrighted and distributed with licence terms ensuring that the source code will always be available. A business should consider a number of things when deliberating over either software.
If choosing propriety, businesses should consider the restrictions of this software such as its use, copying and modification; consider the cost and time spent on modifying the software; privacy and copyright advantages of this software. If choosing open source software, a business should consider factors such as the fact it produces high-quality, reliable low cost software, however there may be a lot of time and money spent on training users.

Q4. What are some of the legal issues involved in acquiring and using software in most business/organisations?
The legal issues mainly derive from licensing. Copying software is illegal and if the correct licensees for the use of the software are not purchased correctly it is considered fraud. It is also imperative to ensure that the business is sufficiently watching the software usage amongst the company – because if someone is using illegal software it is still under your name.

Q5. What is meant by SaaS? Name some examples of this software.
SaaS is Software-as-a-service – which is a method of delivering software in which a vendor hosts the applications. Customers do not own the software but pay for using it such as Google.


Chapter 3

Q1.
Ethical issues concerning the IT world are placed into the four following categories.
1. Privacy – involves collecting, storing, and disseminating information about individuals.
2. Accuracy – involves the authenticity, fidelity and accuracy of information that is collected and processed.
3. Property – involves the ownership and value of information
4. Accessibility – revolves around who should have access to information and whether they should have to pay for this access.

Q2.
1. Unintentional acts – e.g. lack of information security awareness
2. Natural disasters – e.g. earthquakes, hurricanes – must engage in proper planning for backup and recovery of information systems and software.
3. Technical failures – e.g. hardware and software. Most common hardware problem – crash of a hard disc drive. Most common software problem – errors or bugs in computer programs.
4. Management failures – involve lack of funding for security efforts – lack of leadership will cause the information secure of the org to suffer
5. Deliberate acts –

Q3.
Software attacks have evolved from the outbreak era where malicious software tried to affect as many computers as possible
For example
1. Trojan horse: software programs that hide in other computer programs and reveal their designed behaviour only when they are activated.
2. Viruses: segment of computer code that performs malicious actions by attaching to another computer program.
3. Worm: segment for computer code that performs malicious actions and will replicate or spread, by itself (without requiring another computer program)

Q4.
Physical controls – prevent unauthorised individuals from gaining access to a company’s facilities. Common physical controls include walls, doors etc.
Access Control – restrict unauthorised individuals from using information resources. These controls involve two major functions: authentications and authorisation.
Communication controls – secure the movement of data across networks. Communications controls consist of firewalls, anti-malware systems, and intrusion detection systems.
Application controls – are security counter measures that protect specific applications. The three major categories of these controls are input, processing and output controls.

Q5.
Information system audtiting ensure that info systems work properly. ISA invovlves installation of controls in the original system and information system auditing – this examines the inputs, outputs and processing. Which can be performed both internally and externally.

Q6.
Authentication determines the identity if the person requiring access whilst authorisation determines which actions, rights or priovledges the person has, based on verifed identity. Both authentication and authorisation are imperative to e-commerce as it aids rogs in knowing who the user is and what the user has done and knows.

BIT part 2

Chapter 4

Q1.
Many difficulties can arise from managing data. For example the amount of data that needs to be managed grows. Individuals use numerous methods and devices to store data. Content cannot be truly represented and is extremely difficult to manage.

Q2.
Internal data, external data and personal data.

Q3.
A primary key is the identifier field or attribute that uniquely identifies a record. A secondary key is whereby the identifier field or attribute has some kind of identifying information, but typically does not identify the file with complete accuracy.

Q4.
An entity involves a person, thing, place or event where information is maintained in a record. It is the number of entities in which make up a relationship and the degree of the relationship. The main types of relationships include binary, one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many.

Q5.
Relational databases are usually designed with a number of related tables; where each of these tables contains records (listed in row) and attributes (listed in columns). An advantage of relational databases include allowing users great flexibility in the variety of queries they can make; a disadvantage to this though as large scale databases can be composed of many interrelated tables, the overall design can be complex creating slow access times.

Q6.
Knowledge management is a useful concept whereby it aids organizations in an attempt to manipulate important information that is part of the organisaation’s memory. This is normally in an unstructured format. For a particular organisation to be successful in relation to capital, knowledge must exist in an exchangeable format.

Q7.
Tacit knowledge involves ‘the cumulative store of subjective or experiential learning; highly personal and hard to formalize knowledge’. This is comparably different to explicit knowledge which is objective rather than subjective, and is also rational with technical types of knowledge.


Tech Guide 4

Q1.
The main wired communication channels consist of; twisted-pair wire, coaxial cable and fiber-optic cable.
Twisted-pair wire is the most inexpensive, widely available and unobtrusive. In saying this though, it does have a low bandwidth and low security in comparison to coaxial cable and fiber-optic cable. Coaxial cable has a better bandwidth than twisted-pair wire but can be relatively expensive and inflexible. In comparison, Fiber-optic cable carries the higher bandwidth, good security and relatively inexpensive but can be somewhat difficult to work with.

Q2.
Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and the Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), enable users to send high-volume data over any network. ISDN is the older of the two which uses existing telephone lines to transfer voice, video, image and data simultaneously.

Q3.
- Adapt to the constantly changing business environment
- Flexibility
- Networks enable companies to shar hardware, computer applications and data accorss and amongst orgs.
- Improve innovation/efficiency.

Q4.
LAN connects 2 or more devices in a geographical region, usually within the same building. WANs over large geographic areas and centrally connect multiple LANs. LAN – local area network – WAN – wide area network

Q5.
A network protocol is made up of computing devices that are connected to the network access and share the network to transmit and receive data. The components work together and adhere to the set of rules and procedures that govern transmission across a network.

Q6.
Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is the protocol of the Internet.
- The TCP has three functions
1. To manage the movement of packets between computer by establishing a connection between the computers
2. It sequences the transfer of packets
3. Acknowledges the packets that have been transmitted.

Question (7):
Cable and DSL connections
Dial up connection
Broadband connection

Q8.
Application layer - enables client application programs to access the other layers and defines the protocols that applications use to exchange data. Hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) is one of these protocols, which defines how messages are formulated and transmitted.
Transport layer - provides the above layer with communication and packs services. This layer includes TCP.
Network interface layer - places packets on and receives them from the network medium, which could be any networking technology.

Q9.
The role of browsers is to decode and display the HTML code, which was sent from a server (being displayed on an individual’s personal computer).

Q10.
Internet is collectively a networking infrastructure, which connects millions of computers globally, whereas, the World Wide Web is a form of accessing information over the Internet.


Chapter 5

Q1.
1. Discovery – internet allows users to acces information located worldwide databases. With the way the internet is structured, individuals can now access billions of webpages from all around the world about all different things in all different languages.
2. Communication – e.g. e-mail, chat, video conferences.
3. Collaboration – where two or more entities come together to collaborate anfd perform work. People can communicate any place and time…almost!

Q2.
Video conferencing and other interactive networking tools now have high emphasis in business life as well as social life. It allows people at any time and location to connect which is of high need within today’s current business environment. It also enables participants to share data along with voice and video, allowing them to work on documents together and exchange computer files.

Q3.
AJAX: allows sections of Web pages to reload with fresh data instead of requiring the entire Web page to reload.
Tagging: allows users to place information in multiple, overlapping associations rather than in rigid categories.
Blogs and Blogging: whereby a person can enter a site and express his or her feelings.
Wikis: are where material can be posted, and changes can be made to other material.
Really Simple Syndication (RSS): allows users to customize information, receive this information when they want it and without having to surf thousands of web sites.
Podcasts and Videocasts: are digital audio files that are used for example, to build relationships with customers (as Cheerios did).

Q4.
They permit the sharing of data and services without needing humans to translate. Web services can also be used in a variety of environments over the Internet, performing a wide variety of tasks for businesses.

Q5.

Service-orientated architecture (SOA), allows the construction of business applications through using Web services. These web services can be reused across an organisation in other applications.


Chapter 6 – section 6.1

Q1.
E-Commerce is the process of buying, selling, transferring, or exchanging products. Services or information via computer networks, including the Internet. E-business adds to the above processes as it also refers to servicing customers, collaborating with business partners and performing electronic transactions within an organisation.

Q2.
B2C – sellers are orgs and buyers are individuals.
B2B – both sellers and buyers are business orgs
C2C – individual sells products or services to other individuals.
B2E – an org uses electronic commerce internally to provide information and services to its employees.


Section 6.2

Q1.
The major issues relating to e-tailing are channel conflict and order fulfillment. Channel conflict is where conflict may occur for companies with their regular distributors when selling online to customers. Channel conflict can arise in areas such as pricing of products, services and resource allocation.
Order fulfillment can occur at any given time where a company sells to customers directly and is involved in a variety of other order-fulfillment activities.

Section 6.5

Q2.
Electronic payment mechanisms include electronic checks, electronic credit cards, purchasing cards and electronic cash. Electronic credit cards allow customers to charge online payments to their credit card account. Electronic checks is where a customer wishes to use e-checks and established a checking account with a bank. And purchasing cards are normally used for unplanned B2B purchases where corporations normally limit the amount per purchase. Electronic cash appears in forms such as stored-value money cards, smart cards, person-to-person payments and digital wallets.

Q2.
Small payments of a few dollars or less for goods that are purchased over the internet – normally these payments are transferred with a lower security.
Section 6.5

Q1.
A major ethical issue involves threats to privacy. For example, most electronic payment systems know who their customers are. Tracking is also a privacy problem as an individual’s activities on the internet can be tracked by cookies