Amazon Business Model and Operations

Quiz #6 1) Which of the following is a pillar of Amazon's business? Answer: Large selection 2) Amazon got its start selling games online. Answer: False 3) In order to automate profit-pushing hyper-efficiency, Amazon warehouses are powered by at least as much code as the firm's website. Answer: True 4) A(n) _____ is a line of identifying text, assigned and retrieved by a given web server, and stored by your browser. Answer: cookie 5) Amazon owns an inventory of marketplace items. Answer: False 6) If an author uses Amazon as a publisher, his titles will only be available through Kindle. Answer: False 7) Which of the following strategies was followed by Amazon's founder? Answer: He postponed profit harvesting. 8) Amazon has significantly changed the cost-structure of the publishing industry. Answer: True 9) Amazon Web Services (AWS): Answer: offer several advantages, including increased scalability, reliability, and security. 10) Amazon got its start selling _____ online. Answer: Books 11) Tech-fueled operations cannot yield greater profits than off-line players. Answer: False 12) Which of the following is true? Answer: Amazon finds a competitive advantage in the cycle of buyer-seller growth. 13) Amazon's cloud computing business is taking baby steps in that category. Answer: False 14) Which of the following is true of Amazon? Answer: Its cloud computing business is one of the largest players in that category. 15) Dynamic pricing: Answer: refers to pricing that shifts over time. 16) Initially, Amazon adopted the domain of a non-profit organization. Answer: True 17) The three pillars of Amazon's business are large selection, convenience, and lower prices. Answer: True 18) Identify the true statement. Answer: Rivals colluding to set prices is illegal. 19) Amazon Web Services is a fool-proof system. Answer: False 20) In Amazon, warehouse pickers are in charge of: Answer: building one's order from a warehouse's inventory. Quiz #7 1) If ‘V’ represents the value of a network and ‘n,’ the number of users of a network, then according to Metcalfe’s Law: Answer: V= n2 Correct 2) Viral promotion involves: Answer: leveraging a firm’s customers to promote a product or service. 3) eBay auctions more books over its portal than any of its rivals. Similarly, Second Life has more virtual storefronts than its rivals. This is because: Answer: they offer greater market reach and benefits to customers. 4) A market dominated by a small number of powerful sellers is known as a(n) _____. Answer: oligopoly Correct 5) A Blue ocean strategy often works best when combined with operational effectiveness. Answer: False 6) Staying power refers to the: Answer: long-term viability of a product or service. 7) Two distinctly separate markets are said to undergo convergence when they: Answer: begin to offer similar features and capabilities. 8) In the absence of network effects, the value of a product or service increases as the number of users grows. Answer: False 9) High switching costs serve to weaken the value of network effects as a value asset. Answer: False 10) In the context of network effects, the term “network” refers to wireless systems that connect pieces of electronics. Answer: False 11) ____ is said to occur when one market attempts to conquer a new market by making it a subset, component, or feature of its primary offering. Answer: Envelopment 12) Large firms often find new markets attractive, but might not have products ready for delivery. What strategy do such firms use to get potential adopters to delay their purchasing decisions? Answer: Preannounce forthcoming efforts 13) Which of the following factors ensures that a user considers the staying power of a product before adopting it? Answer: Value of the user’s investment 14) A(n) _____ is a product that allows a firm to tap into the complementary products, data, or user base of another product or service. Answer: adaptor 15) 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: Answer: backward compatibility 16) Many firms attempt to enhance their network effects by creating a platform for the development of thirdparty products and services that enhance the primary offering. Answer: True 17) While Sony and Microsoft focused on the graphics and raw processing power favored by hard-core male gamers, Nintendo chose to develop a machine to appeal to families, women, and age groups that normally shunned violent games. The strategy adopted by Nintendo in this example is the _____ strategy. Answer: blue ocean 18) A firm can spend no money and time, yet expect to enhance its offerings, by: Answer: allowing other firms to contribute to its platform. 19) Cross-side benefits arise due to interaction among members of a single class of participant. Answer: False 20) Which of the following factors represents one of the sources of value derived from network effects? Answer: Staying power Quiz #8 1) What is the likely implication of a large and active wiki community? Answer: It becomes more likely that content is up-to-date and errors are quickly corrected. 2) The inherently _____ nature of feeds allows individuals to rapidly blast their activities to their contacts or “friends.” Answer: viral 3) Which of the following refers to a feature of wikis that allows the restoring of earlier work in the event of a posting error, inaccuracy, or vandalism? Answer: Roll back 4) Peer production and social media fall under the Web 1.0 umbrella. Answer: False 5) Friendster is an online service that allows members to establish contact with other members, consolidate those contacts, and share online information with those contacts. Friendster is an example of a: Answer: Social Network 6) ____ are individuals often employed by organizations to review community content in order to delete excessive posts, move commentary to the best location, and edit as necessary. Answer: Wikimasters 7) According to the text, the most popular platform for users choosing to host their own blog server is: Answer: Wordpress 8) Any Twitter user can create hash tags to organize tweets by simply appending a # character before a character. Answer: True 9) The value of any particular blog derives from a combination of technical and social features. Answer: True 10) Which of the following is an example of crowdsourcing? Answer: Reuben takes Mary’s job and assigns it to a group of highly efficient employees. 11) Most popular podcasts are from mainstream media outlets. Answer: True 12) The population of _____ users is now so large that it could be considered the third largest “nation” in the world. Answer: Facebook 13) Which of the following services come under the Web 2.0 umbrella? Answer: Link sharing 14) Which of the following statements about Web 2.0 is true? Answer: Peer production is leveraged to create much of the open source software that supports many of the Web 2.0 efforts. 15) _____ is a network of satellites and supporting technologies used to identify a device’s physical location. Answer: GPS 16) A(n) _____ is a computer-generated environment where users present themselves in the form of an avatar, or animated character. Answer: virtual world 17) Twitter has made its data available for free to other developers via application programming interfaces. Answer: True 18) Which of the following represents potential ethical challenges associated with prediction markets? Answer: An insider trading information 19) _____ is a term used to describe others taking advantage of a user or service without providing any sort of reciprocal benefit. Answer: Free rider problem 20) Blogs are used to collaborate on common tasks or to create a common knowledge base. Answer: False Quiz #9 1) Facebook has overtaken all Internet rivals, except Google, in terms of revenue per user. Answer: False 2) What can managers expect to learn from Facebook’s feeds fiasco? Answer: Firms should engage users on new initiatives and take steps to protect user privacy. 3) Which of the following statements holds true for the term "free rider problem"? Answer: It refers to a situation when others take advantage of a user or a service without providing any sort of reciprocal benefit. 4) Investor groups that provide funding in exchange for a stake in the firm and often, a degree of managerial control are called _____. Answer: venture capitalists 5) Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, ensured that he remained in control of the firm even after it went public by: Answer: retaining a majority of voting rights in the public company. 6) A stock broker trades shares he does not own with an obligation of later repayment, and in the hope that the price of traded shares will fall. He then repays share debt with shares purchased at a lower price and pockets the spread between initial share price and repayment price. This attempt to profit from a falling stock price is known as _____. Answer: short selling 7) Firms spend more advertising online than they do on radio and magazine ads. Answer: True 8) Uncertainty about the ROI of Facebook advertising is an area of concern for the firm. Answer: True 9) Which of the following statements holds true of network effects? Answer: It refers to a situation when the value of a product or service increases as the number of its users expands. 10) Third-party Web sites can choose to accept a user's Facebook credentials to allow the user to access their content. Answer: True 11) What is the biggest problem confronted by Facebook in the wake of the Beacon fiasco? Answer: Managers are unlikely to sign up for Facebook's future experiments. 12) Advertisers on Facebook are charged only on a pay-per-click basis for banner ads. Answer: False 13) For years, which of the following is the only major media category that has seen an increase in spending? Answer: Online advertising 14) _____ refers to the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call. Answer: Crowdsourcing 15) Which of the following factors suggests that Facebook can offer Google greater competition in the search engine market? Answer: Much of Facebook's content being inaccessible to standard search engines 16) Facebook is mostly powered by open source software such as MySQL and Memcache. Answer: True 17) Facebook's growing dominance has given rise to the fear that if increasingly large parts of the Web reside inside a single service, innovation, competition, and exchange may suffer. Answer: True 18) Facebook enjoys significantly higher click-through rates than Google. Answer: False 19) Facebook was conceived as a place for: Answer: reinforcing the preexisting contacts of the users. 20) Facebook was a struggling company at IPO. Answer: False