| 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 |
|
ubiquity, global reach, universal standards, richness, interactivity, information density, personalization/customization |
seven unique features of e-commerce technology |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
disintermediation |
displacement of market middlmen who traditionally are intermediaries between producers and consumers by a new direct relationship between manufacturers and content originators with their customer |
|
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 |
|
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 document 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 |
|
asymmetry |
exists whenever one participant in a market has more resources than other participants |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
portal |
offers users powerful Web search tools as well as an integrated package of content and services all in one place |
|
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 access to digital electronic markets |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) |
a protocol that secures communications between the client and the server |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
cookie |
a tool used by websites to store 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 |