IS 480 E-Commerce Midterm Exam

IS 480 –E-Commerce Midterm Exam

Summer 2004

Dr. Abdulrahman Mirza_____Student #: ______Student Name: ______

1. E-commerce can be defined as:

a) the use of the Internet and the Web to transact business

b) the digital enablement of transactions and processes within a firm

c) digitally enabled commercial transactions between and among organizations and individuals

d) both (a) and (c)

2. The following are all unique features of e-commerce technology:

a) interactivity, global reach, risk-free, personalization/customization

b) universal standards, richness, information density, interactivity

c) information density, universal standards, personalization/customization, sales force-driven

d) local/regional reach, interactivity, richness, personalization/customization

3. The total amount of B2C e-commerce revenues is less than that spent on B2B e-commerce. T F

4. In 2006, the total amount of B2C e-commerce revenues is expected to be greater than the total amount of B2B e-commerce revenues. T F

5. Disintermediation refers to:

a) new opportunities for middlemen to aggregate content, products and services

b) the disappearance of market middlemen and the destruction of traditional distribution channels

c) hyper-competition

d) the fact that when everyone uses the same tool or product, all participants receive more value

6. The crash in stock market values for E-commerce companies throughout 2000 can be attributed at least in part to:

a) a shortage in high-speed fiber optic telecommunications networks capacity

b) inflated stock market valuations of e-commerce companies

c) the fact that total e-commerce revenues in 2000 were less than they were in 1999

d) all of the above

7. Which of the following will likely characterize the E-commerce II era?

a) predominance of pure online strategies

b) emphasis on revenue growth vs. profits

c) stronger government regulation

d) first mover advantages

8. Customization means to change a delivered product or service based upon a consumer’s preferences or past purchasing behavior. T F

9. Which of the following statements is not true?

a) In 2000, there were over 70 million Internet host computers in over 245 countries

b) In 2000, there were between 1 billion and 2 billion Web pages

c) In 2000, the Internet/Web had 80% share of United States households

d) all of the above

10. Which of the following is not a limitation on the growth of B2C e-commerce?

a) the sophisticated skill set required to use the Internet and e-commerce systems

b) expensive technology

c) the persistent global inequality limiting access to telephone service, PCs, and cell phones

d) the retrenchment and consolidation of e-commerce into the hands of large established firms

11. Which of the following statements is not true?

a) B2B e-commerce is the largest form of e-commerce with about $700 billion in transactions in 2001

b) M-commerce is used most widely in Japan and Finland at present

c) P2P e-commerce provides a way for consumers to sell to each other with the help of an online market maker

d) With current growth rates, by 2005, all B2C e-commerce will roughly equal the annual revenue of Wal-Mart

12. “What will your firm provide that others do not or cannot?” is a key question to be asked in developing which business model component?

a) value proposition

b) management team

c) Market strategy

d) revenue model

13. ______refers to the other companies operating in the same marketspace selling similar products.

a) Competitive advantage

b) Competitive environment

c) First mover advantage

d) Market opportunity

14. A firm’s ______describes how a firm will produce a superior return on invested capital.

a) value proposition

b) revenue model

c) market strategy

d) competitive advantage

15. Which of the following companies utilizes a transaction fee revenue model?

a) WSJ.com

b) E-Trade.com

c) MyPoints.com

d) Salesforce.com

16. The existence of a large number of competitors in any one market segment may indicate:

a) an untapped market niche

b) the market is saturated

c) that it may difficult to operate profitably in the market

d) both (b) and (c)

17. Vertical marketplaces:

a) supply products and services of interest to particular industries

b) sell specific products and services to a wide range of companies in different industries

c) include all users of the Internet

d) none of the above

18. A/An ______is a company that offers access to Internet-based software applications to other companies.

a) market creator

b) ASP

c) B2B hub

d) Portal

19. Which of the following forces impacts industry structure?

a) The bargaining power of suppliers and buyers

b) The threat of substitute products

c) Barriers to entry

d) All of the above

20. A ______is the set of activities performed in an industry or in a firm that transforms raw inputs into final products and services.

(a) supply chain

(b) value chain

(d) logistics chain

21. e-Steel.com is an example of which of the following business models?

a) B2B service provider

b) B2B marketplace/exchange

c) B2B e-distributor

d) Infomediary

22. The process of slicing digital messages into parcels, sending them along different communication paths as they become available, and reassembling them at the destination point is called:

a) routing

b) the Transmission Control protocol

c) packet switching

d) the File Transfer protocol

23. Specialized computers that interconnect the thousands of computers that make up the Internet in order to transmit message parcels along available communication paths and on to their destinations are called:

a) transponders

b) routers

c) servers

d) clients

24. Which of the following statement about client/server computing is true?

a) It exploded the available communications capacity.

b) It provided communication rules and regulations

c) It connects multiple powerful personal computers together in one network with one or more computers dedicated to common functions that they all need.

d) It does not provide sufficient computing capacity to support graphics or color.

25. ______is one of the original Internet protocols used to transfer files from a server computer to a client computer and vice versa.:

a) SMTP

b) FTP

c) HTTP

d) SSL

26. Which of the following protocols is used to send mail to a server?:

a) SMTP

b) FTP

c) HTTP

d) SSL

27. ______is a utility program that allows you to track the path of a message you send from your client to a remote computer on the Internet.

a) Telnet

b) Ping

c) Tracert

d) Finger

28. The Internet Layer of TCP/IP is responsible for:

a) placing packets on and receiving them from the network medium

b) addressing, packaging, and routing messages

c) providing communication with the application by acknowledging and sequencing the packets to and from the application

d) providing a variety of application with the ability to access the services of the lower layers

29. HTML is used to describe data whereas XML is used to format the structure and style of a Web page. T F

30. ______is a set of standards for communicating between a browser and a program running on a server that allows for interaction between the user and server.

(a) CGI

(b) ColdFusion

(d) VBScript

31. The term stateless refers to the fact that:

(a) no one government entity controls the Internet

(b) the server does not have to maintain an ongoing dedicated interaction with the client computer

(d) none of the above.

32. The leading Web server software is

(a) Apache HTTP

(b) Microsoft Internet Information Server

(d) Linux

33. The ______for a system are the information elements that the system must produce in order to achieve its business objectives

(a) system functionalities

(b) systems development life cycle

(d) unit testing plans

34. Which of the following might include a data flow diagram to describe the flow of information for a Web site?

(a) physical design

(b) logical design

(d) co-location plan

35. An advantage of hosting your Web site with a specialized hosting company?

a) free your company from web site development planning

b) free your company from server maintenance problems

c) free your company from the need to make marketing decisions

d) All of the above

36. Java Server Pages is most similar to the following:

(a) VBScript and ActiveX

(b) CGI and ASP

(d) JavaScript

37. One possible way you can fine tune the processing architecture of a Web site is to store HTML pages in RAM rather than on a server’s hard drive. T F

38. Scaling a site horizontally involves upgrading servers from a single processor to multiple processors. T F

39. All of the following are basic functionality provided by Web servers except:

(a) site management tools

(b) data capture tools

(d) shopping cart

40. Which of the following is a key factor to consider in choosing an e-commerce suite?

(a) support for different business models

(b) performance and scalability

(d) all of the above

41. Which of the following is not a true statement

(a) Dynamic page generation and business logic (e.g. shopping cart) are I/O intensive operations.

(b) System performance tends to degrade as more and more simultaneous uses request service.

(d) The more large multimedia files a Web site has, the greater the load on the system.

42. The primary way a Web site is able to personalize the content presented to a visitor is through the use of:

(a) privacy policies

(b) cookies

(d) site management tools

43. ______refers to the ability to ensure that e-commerce participants do not deny their own actions.

(a) Nonrepudiation

(b) Authentication

(d) Integrity

44. A Trojan horse is a virus that appears to be benign, but then does something other than expected. T F

45. A Denial of Service (DoS) attack can compromise a Web site’s:

(a) integrity

(b) authenticity

(d) confidentiality

46. Encryption can provide all of the following dimensions of e-commerce security except:

(a) authentication

(b) confidentiality

(d) privacy

47. Which of the following uses double encryption of a message:

(a) public key encryption

(b) symmetric key encryption

(d) PKI

48. One way to make public key encryption more efficient is to use a:

(a) digital signature

(b) digital envelope

(d) none of the above

49. All the following statements about symmetric key encryption are true except:

(a) In symmetric key encryption, both the sender and the receiver use the same key to encrypt and decrypt a message.

(b) The Data Encryption Standard is a symmetric key encryption system.

(d) Symmetric key encryption is still a part of Internet encryption.

50. A hash function is used to generate a message digest after the message has been encrypted. T F