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CIS 2200 Quiz 1

Porter’s five forces:

  1. Intensity of rivalry among existing competitors

  2. Threat of new entrants

  3. Threat of substitute goods or services

  4. Bargaining power of buyers

  5. Bargaining power of suppliers

Value Chain: set of activities through which a product or service is created and delivered to customers

5 Primary components of value chain:

  1. Inbound Logistics (getting needed materials and other inputs into firm from suppliers)

  2. Operations (turning inputs into products or services)

  3. Outbound logistics (delivering products/services to consumers, retailers, or other partners)

  4. Marketing and sales (customer engagement, pricing, promotion, transaction)

  5. Support (service, maintenance, customer support)

4 secondary components of value chain:

  1. Firm infrastructure (functions that support whole firm, like general management, planning, IS, finance)

  2. Human Resource management (recruiting, hiring, training, development)

  3. Tech/research and development (new product and process design)

  4. Procurement (sourcing and purchasing functions)

Operational effectiveness: Performing the same tasks better than rivals perform them

Danger of operational effectiveness: danger of “sameness” which can lead to a lack of differentiation in the market and make it challenging for a company to stand out from competitors as customers may perceive them as interchangeable with others

Strategic positioning: performing different tasks than rivals, or the same tasks in a different way

Resource-based view of competitive advantage: for a firm to maintain sustainable competitive advantage, they have to control exploitable resources that meet 4 characteristics:

  1. Valuable - MAKE PEOPLE CARE

  2. Rare - UNIQUENESS

  3. Imperfectly imitable (Tough to Imitate) - MAKE ADVANTAGES STAND OUT

  4. Nonsubstitutable - MAKE ADVANTAGES STAND OUT

Sustainable Competitive Advantage: Financial performance that consistently outperforms industry averages

Greige: goods to be further customized based on designer/manager collaboration

Straddling: refers to a firm's attempt to occupy more than one position, WHILE FAILING to match benefits of a more efficient, singularly focused rival

Omnichannel: approach to retails that offers consumers an integrated and complementary set of shop, sales, and return experiences (link between online and offline sales)

Economies of scale: when costs can be spread across increasing units of production or in serving multiple customers

Experiential products: items need to be seen and experienced in person before a buyer can decide

Fast follower problem: when savvy rivals watch & learn from a pioneer's efforts (see what worked and didn't work) to then enter the same market faster AND w/ a comparable or superior product at a lower cost

Information asymmetry: a decision situation where one party has more or better info than its counterparty (salesperson vs regular person)

Price transparency: the degree to which complete info is available

Switching cost: the cost a consumer experiences when moving from one product to another (like changing from iPhone to Samsung)

Commodity: basic good, interchangeable with near identical offerings by others

Brand: symbolic embodiment of all the information connected w/ a product or service

Product-market fit: conveys the degree to which a product satisfies market demand

Inventory turns: number of times inventory is sold or used during a given period

—> turnover rate

Disintermediation: the salesperson or intermediate person with information that is no longer needed (salesperson serves no further purpose)

Showrooming: concept where customers browse at physical retailers, but purchase products from lower-cost online rivals

Vertical integration: when a single firm owns several layers in its value chain

Tactical info systems: do not position the firm to create or add value, even though they are important for the business's operations (used to make decisions that works well with incomplete information)

Strategic Information systems: used to support or shape the competitive strategy of an organization and are not defined by their functionality or the organizational function they support but are instead defined by objectives and purpose they serve (Used for data and detail)

Barriers of entry: low for tech-centric businesses

Differentiation: making products seem different through various tactics

Supply chain for physical retailers:

  1. Production

  2. Warehouse (supplier)

  3. Warehouse (distributer, retail, etc)

  4. store

  5. There’s information asymmetry and difficult to keep track of customers

Supply chain for online retailers:

  1. Begins with customer researching and placing order

  2. production (greige, JIT, manufacturer) OR Warehouse (data driven, manufacturer)

  3. Delivered to customer

Online Analytical Processing (OLAP systems): prediction and forecast

OLTP Systems: data captured in real time

Information flow in an organization: