| Term | Definition |
|---|
| e-commerce | the use of the Internet and the Web to transact business. More formally, digitally enabled commercial transactions between and among organizations and individuals |
| e-business | the digital enablement of transactions and processes within a firm, involving information systems under the control of a firm |
| information asymmetry | any disparity in relevant market information among parties in a transaction |
| marketplace | physical space you visit in order to transact |
| ubiquity | available just about everywhere, at all times |
| marketspace | marketplace extended beyond traditional boundaries and removed from a temporal and geographic location |
| seven unique features of e-commerce technology | ubiquity, global reach, universal standards, richness, interactivity, information density, personalization/customization |
| information density | The total amount and quality of information available to all market participants |
| reach | the total number of users or customers an e-commerce business can obtain |
| universal standards | standards that are shared by all nations around the world |
| richness | the complexity and content of a message |
| interactivity | technology that allows for two-way communication between merchant and consumer |
| personalization | the targeting of marketing messages to specific individuals by adjusting the message to a person's name, interests, and past purchases |
| B2C e-commerce | online businesses selling to individual consumers |
| B2B e-commerce | online businesses selling to other businesses |
| C2C e-commerce | consumers selling to other consumers |
| P2P e-commerce | use of peer-to-peer technology, which enables Internet users to share files and computer resources directly without having to go through a central Web server, in e-commerce |
| mobile commerce | use of wireless digital devices to enable transactions on the web |
| Internet | Worldwide network of computer networks built on common standards |
| World Wide Web | the most popular service that runs on the Internet; provides easy access to over 8 billion web pages |
| disintermediation | displacement of market middlmen who trasitionally are intermediaries between producers and consumers by a new direct relationship between manufacturers and content originators with their costomer |
| friction-free commerce | a vision of commerce in which information is equally distributed, transaction costs are low, prices can be dynamically adjusted to reflect actual demand, intermediaries decline, and unfair competitive advantages are eliminated |
| first mover | a firm that is first to market in a particular area and that moves quickly to gather market share |
| network effect | occurs where users receive value from the fact everyone else uses the same tool or product |
| business model | a set of planned activites designed to result in a profit in a marketplace |
| business plan | a doscument that describes a firm's business model |
| e-commerce business model | a business model that aims to use and leverage the unique qualities of the Internet and the World Wide Web |
| value proposition | defines how a company's product or serive fulfills the needs of customers |
| revenue model | describes how the firm will earn revenue, produce profits, and provide a superior return on invested capital |
| advertising revenue model | a company provides a forum for advertisements and receive fees from advertisers |
| subscription revenue model | a company offers its users content or services and charges a subcription fee for access to some or all of its offerings |
| transaction fee revenue model | a company receives a fee for enabling or executing a transaction |
| sales revenue model | a company derives revenue by selling goods, information, or services |
| affiliate revenue model | a company steers business to an affiliate and receives a referral fee or percentage of the revenues from any resulting sales |
| market opportunity | refers to the company's intended marketspace and the overall potential financial opportunities available to the firm in that marketspace |
| marketspace | the area of actual or potential commercial value in which a company intends to operate |
| competitive environment | refers to the other companies operating in the same marketspace selling similar products |
| competitive advantage | achieved by a firm when it can produce a superior product a superior product and/or bring the product to market at a lower price than most, or all, of its competitors |
| asymmetry | exists whenever one participant in a market has more resources than other participants |
| first mover advantage | a competitive market advantage for a firm that results from being the first into a marketplace with a serviceable product or service |
| complimentary resources | resources and assets not directly involved in the production of the product but required for success, such as marketing, management, financial assets, reputation |
| unfair competitve advantage | occurs when one firm develops an advantage based on a factor that other firms cannot purchase |
| perfect market | a market in which there are no competitive advantages or asymmetries because all forms have equal access to all the factors of production |
| leverage | when a company uses its competitive advantages to achieve more advantage in surrounding markets |
| market strategy | the plan you put together tha details exactly how you intend to enter a new market and attract new customers |
| organizational development | plan describes how the company will organize the work that needs to be accomplished |
| management team | employees of the company responsible for making the business model work |
| portal | offers users powerful Web search tolls as well as an integrated package of content and services all in one place |
| e-tailer | online retail store |
| barriers to entry | the total cost of entering a new marketplace |
| intellectual property | refers to all forms of human expression that can be put into a tangible medium such as text, CDs, or the Web |
| content provider | distributes information content, such as digital news, music, photos, video, and artwork over the Web |
| transaction broker | site that processes transaction for cosumers that are normally handled in person, by phone, or mail |
| market creator | builds a digital environment where buyers and sellers can meet, display products, search for products, and establish a price for products |
| service provider | offers services online |
| community provider | sites that create a digital online environment where people with similar interests can transact (buy and sell goods), communicate with like-minded people, and receive interest-related information |
| e-distributer | a company that supplies products and services directly to individual businesses |
| e-procurement firm | creates and sells acces to digital electronic markets |
| B2B service provider | sells business services to other firms |
| application services provider (ASP) | a company that sells access to Internet-based software applications to other companies |
| scale economics | efficiencies that arise from increasing the size of a business |
| exchange | an independent digital electronic marketplace where suppliers and commercial purchasers can conduct transactions |
| industry consortia | industry-owned vertical marketplace that serve specific industries |
| private indistrial network | digital network designed to coordinate the flow of communictions among firms engaged in business together |
| industry structure | refers to the nature of the players in an industry and their relative bargaining power |
| value chain | the set of activities performed in an industry or in a firm that transforms raw inputs into final products and services |
| firm value chain | the set of activities a firm engages in to create final products from raw inputs |
| value web | networked trans-business system that coordinates the value chains of several firms |
| business strategy | a set of plans for achieving superior long-term returns on the capital invested in a business firm |
| profit | the difference between the price a firm is able to charge for its products and the cost of producing and distributing goods |
| differentiation | refers to all the ways producers can make their products unique and different to distinguish them from those of competitors |
| commoditization | a situation where there are no differences among products or services, and the only basis of choosing products is price |
| package switching | a method of slicing digital messages into packets, sending the packets along different communication paths as they become available, and then reassembling the packets once they arrive at their destination |
| packet | the discrete units into which digital message are sliced for transmission over the Internet |
| router | special-purpose computer that interconnects the computer networks that make up the Internet and routes packets to their ultimate destination as they travel the Internet |
| routing algorithm | computer program that ensures that packets take the best available path toward their destination |
| protocol | a set of rules and standards for data transfers |
| Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) | the core communications protocol for the Internet |
| TCP | protocol that establishes the connections among sending and receiving Web computers and handles the assembly of packets at the point of trasmission, and their reassembly at the receiving end |
| IP | protocol that provides the Internet's addressing scheme and is responsible for the actual delivery of the packets |
| Network Interface Layer | responsible for placing packets on and receiving them from the network medium |
| Internet Layer | responsible for addressing, packing, and routing messages on the Internet |
| Transport Layer | responsible for providing communication with the application by acknowledging and sequencing the packets to and from the application |
| Application Layer | provides a wide variety of applications with the ability to access the services of the lower layers |
| IP address | Internt address expressed as a 32-bit number that appears as a series of four separate numbers marked off by periods, such as 64.49.254.91 |
| domain name | IP address expressed in natural language |
| Domain Name System (DNS) | system for expressing numeric IP addresses in natural language |
| Uniform Resource Locator (URL) | the address used by a Web browser to identify the location of content on the Web |
| client/server computing | a modlel of computing in which powerful personal computers are connected in a network togetherwith one or more servers |
| client | a powerful personal computer that is part of a network |
| server | network computer dedicated to common functions that the client computers on the network need |
| HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) | the Internet protocol used for transferring Web pages |
| Simple Mail Transfer Protocol | the Internet protocol used to send mail to a server |
| Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3) | a protocol used by the client to retrieve mail from an Internet server |
| Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) | a more current e-mail protocol that allows users to search, organize, and filter their mail prior to downloading it from the server |
| File Transfer Protocol (FTP) | one of the original Internet services. Part of the TCP/IP protocol that permits users to transfer files from the server to their client computer, and vice versa |
| Telnet | a terminal emulation program that runs in TCP/IP |
| Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) | a protocol that secures communications between the client and the server |
| Ping | a program that allows you to check the connection between your client and the server |
| Tracert | one of several route-tracing utilities that allow you to follow the path of a message you send from your client to a remote computer on the Internet |
| Pathping | combines the functionality offered by Ping and Tracert |
| Network Technology Substrate layer | layer of Internet technology that is composed of telecommunications networks and protocols |
| Transport Services and Representation Standards layer | layer of Internet architecture that houses the TCP/IP protocol |
| Applications layer | layer of Internet architecture that contains alient applications |
| Midleware Services layer | the "glue" that ties the applications to the communications networks, and includes such services as security, authentication, addresses, and storage repositories |
| Network Service Provider (NSP) | owns and controls one of the major networks comprising the Internet's backbone |
| backbone | high-bandwith fiber-optic cable that transports data across the Internet |
| bandwidth | measures how much data can be transferred over a communications medium within a fixed period of time; is usually expressed in bits per second (bps), kilobits per second (Kbps), or megabits per second (Mbps) |
| redundancy | multiple duplicate devices and paths in a network |
| campus area network (CAN) | generally, a local area network operating within a single organization that leases access to the Web directly from regional national carriers |
| Internet Services Provider (ISP) | firm that provides the lowest level of service in the multi-tiered Internet architecture by leasing Internet access to home owners, small businesses, and some large institutions |
| narrowband | the traditional telephone modem connection, now operating at 56.6 Kbps |
| broadband | refers to any communications technology that permits clients to play streaming audio and video files at acceptable speeds-generally anything above 100 Kbps |
| Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) | a telephone technology for delivering high-speed access through ordinary telephone lines found in homes or businesses |
| cable modem | a cable television technology that piggybacks digital access to the Internet on top of the analog video cable providing television signals to a home |
| T1 | an international teleport standards for digital communication that offers guaranteed delivery at 1.54 Mbps |
| T3 | an international teleport standards for digital communication that offers guaranteed delivery at 45 Mbps |
| intranet | a TCP/IP network located within a single organization for purposes of communications and information processing |
| extranet | formed when firms permit outsiders to access their internal TCP/IP networks |
| latency | delays in messages caused by the uneven flow of information packets through the network |
| Internet2 | a consortium of more than 200 universities, government agencies, and private businesses that are collaborating to find ways to make the Internet more efficient |
| GigaPop | a regional Gigabit Point of Presence, or point of access to the Internet2 network, that supports at least one gigabit (1 billion bits) per second information transfer |
| fiber-optic cable | consists of up to hundreds of strands of glass or plastic that use light to transmit data |
| photonics | the study of communicating with light waves |
| Big Band | can accommodate |
| second generation (2G) cellular networks | are relatively slow circuit-switched digital networks that can transmit data at about 10 Kbps |
| 2.5G network | Interim cellular network that provides speeds of 60-144 Kbps using General Packet Radio Switching |
| GPRS (General Packet Radio Services) | next generation technology carries data in packets, just like the Internet, but over radio frwquencies that make wireless communication possible |
| Third generation (3G) cellular network | new generation of cellular phone standards that can connect users to the Web at 2.4 Mbps |
| GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) | mobile communications system widely used in Europe and Asia that uses narrowband Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) |
| CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) | mobile communications system widely used in the United States that used in the United States that uses the full spectrum of radio frequencies and digitally encrypts each call |
| WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) | a realtively new protocol that can support virtually any wireless network and is supported by every operating system |
| Wireless markup Language (WML) | programming language for devices using WAP |
| iMode | wireless standards that is a proprietary service of the Japanese company NTT DoCoMo |
| Bluetooth | new technology standard for short-range wireless communication under 100 meters |
| IP mutlicasting | a set of technologies that enables efficient delivery of data to many locations on a network |
| diffserv (differentiated quality of service) | a new technology that assigns levels of priority to packets based on the type of data being transmitted |
| universal computing | the sharing of files, information, graphics, sound, video, and other object across all computer platforms in thw rolds, regardless of operating systems |
| Hypertext | a way of formatting pages with embedded links that connect documents to one another, and that also link pages to other objects such as sound, video, or animation |
| HyperText Markup Language (HTML) | one of the next generation of GMLs that is relatively easy to use in Web page design. HTML provides Web page designers with a fixed set of markups "tags" are used to format a Web page |
| eXtensible Markup Language (XML) | a new markup language specification developed by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) that is designed to describe data and information |
| Web server software | software that enables a computer to deliver Web pages written in HTML to client computers on a network that request this service by sending an HTTP request |
| database server | server designed to access specific information with a database |
| ad server | server designed to deliver targeted banner ads |
| mail server | server that provides e-mail messages |
| video server | server that serves video clips |
| Web client | any computing device attached to the Internet that is capable of making HTTP requests and displaying HTML pages, most commonly a Windows PC or Macintosh |
| electronic mail (e-mail) | the most used application of the Internet. Uses a series of protocols to enable messages containing text, images, sound, and video clips to be transferred from one internet user to another. |
| intelligent agent | software program that gathers and/or filters information ona specific topic and the provides a list of results for the user |
| cookie | a tool used by websites to sotre information about a user. When a visitor enters a website, the site sends a small text file to the users computer so that info from the site can be loaded more quickly for future vists. |
| Really Simple Syndication (RSS) | program that allows users to have digital content, including text, articles, blogs and podcast audio files, automatically sent to their computers over the internet |
| IP telephony | a general term for the technologies that use VoIP and the internet;s packet-switched network to transmit voice and other forms of audio communication over the Internet |
Combine with other sets
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace