Module 01: Questions for exploration and discussion
1. What is e-commerce? How does it differ from e-business? Where does it intersect with e-business?
3. What are some of the unique features of e-commerce technology?
5. What are three benefits of universal standards?
8. What is Web 2.0? Give local examples of Web 2.0 sites and explain why you included them in your list.
18. What factors will help define the future of e-commerce over the next five years?
19. Why is a multi-disciplinary approach necessary if one hopes to understand
e-com¬merce?
sourced from Laudon, KC & Traver, CG 2013, E-commerce 2013: business, technology, society, 9th edn, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, pp 96-7.
Module 02: Questions for exploration and discussion
1, 3, 4. What are the three basic building blocks of the Internet? Explain how packet switching works. How is the TCP/IP protocol related to information transfer on the Internet?
6. What is cloud computing, and how has it impacted the Internet?
11. Compare and contrast intranets, extranets, and the Internet as a whole.
12. Identify and discuss some of the major limitations of today’s Internet?
14. Compare and contrast the capabilities of Wi-Fi and 3G/4G wireless networks.
16. What are two major technological advancements that are anticipated which will accompany the Internet of the future? Discuss the importance of each.

19. Name and describe five services currently available through the Web.
20. Why are mobile apps the next big thing?
sourced from Laudon, KC & Traver, CG 2013, E-commerce 2013: business, technology, society, 9th edn, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, pp.176-7.
Module 03: Questions for exploration and discussion
2. Define the systems development life cycle and discuss the various steps involved in creating an e-commerce site.
6. Why is a Web site so costly to maintain? Discuss the main factors that impact cost?
7. Discuss the similarity and differences between single-tier and multi-tier site architectures?
8. Name and explain five basic functionalities a Web server should provide.
9, 10. What are the three main factors to consider when choosing the best platform for your Web site? Why is Web server bandwidth an important issue for e-commerce sites?
12. What are the eight most important factors impacting Web site design, and how do they affect a site’s operation.
14. Name and describe three tools used to treat customers individually. Why are they significant to e-commerce?
15. What are some of the policies e-commerce businesses must develop before launching a site and why?
sourced from Laudon, KC & Traver, CG 2013, E-commerce 2013: business, technology, society, 9th edn, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, pp .
Module 04: Questions for exploration and discussion
1. Identify and discuss the elements that make up a user friendly website.
2. What benefits are gained by having consistent and meaningful labelling and naming practices.
3. Discuss why navigation is so important within a website.
4. Nominate your favour website and from a usability perspective, explain why you like using the site.
Reference Points:
Leavitt, MO & Shneiderman, B 2003, Research-based web design & usability guidelines, http://www.usability.gov/guidelines/guidelines_book.pdf Chapters 5,6,7, & 9.
Laudon, KC & Traver, CG 2013, E-commerce 2013: business, technology, society, 9th edn, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
Building up a wireframe, W3C, sited 9 August 2013, http://www.w3.org/wiki/Building_up_a_site_wireframe
Module 05: Questions for exploration and discussion
1, 2. Why is it less risky to steal online? Explain some of the ways criminals deceive consumers and merchants. Explain why an e-commerce site might not want to report being the target of cybercriminals.
3. Give an example of security breaches as they relate to each of the six dimensions of e-commerce security. For instance, what would be a privacy incident?
4. How would you protect your firm against a Denial of Service attack?,
7. How does spoofing threaten a Web site’s operations?
8. Why is adware or spyware considered to be a security threat?
9. What are some of the steps a company can take to curtail cybercriminal activity from within a business?
11. Explain how public key cryptography works.
18. Compare and contrast stored value payment systems and checking transfers.
20. Name six advantages and six disadvantages of using cash as a form of payment.
24. Describe the major steps involved in an online credit card transaction.
25, 26. Compare and contrast smart cards and traditional credit cards.
sourced from Laudon, KC & Traver, CG 2013, E-commerce 2013: business, technology, society, 9th edn, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, pp369-70 .
Module 06: Business Models for E-commerce
Teaching Objectives
• Identify the key components of e-commerce business models.
• Describe the major B2C business models.
• Describe the major B2B business models.
• Explain the key business concepts and strategies applicable to e-commerce.
Questions for exploration and discussion
1,2. What is a business model? How does it differ from a business plan? What are the eight key components of an effective business model?
4. Identify and describe the five primary revenue models used by e-commerce firms.
8. What are some of the specific ways that a company can obtain a competitive advantage?
13. What are the major differences between virtual storefronts and bricks-and-clicks operations? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
14. Besides news and articles, what other forms of information or content do content providers offer?
16. What are the key success factors for exchanges? How are they different from portals?
17. What is an application service provider?
20. Who are the major players in an industry value chain and how are they impacted by e-commerce technology?
21. What are four generic business strategies for achieving a profitable business?
sourced from Laudon, KC & Traver, CG 2013, E-commerce 2013: business, technology, society, 9th edn, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, pp 369-70.
Module 07: e-Commerce Marketing
Teaching Objectives
• Identify the key features of the Internet audience.
• Discuss the basic concepts of consumer behavior and purchasing decisions.
• Explain how consumers behave online.
• Describe the basic marketing concepts needed to understand Internet marketing.
• Identify and describe the main technologies that support online marketing.
• Identify and describe basic e-commerce marketing and branding strategies.
Questions for exploration and discussion
3. Would you say that the Internet fosters or impedes social activity? Explain your position.
5, 6. Research has shown that many consumers use the Internet to investigate purchases before actually buying, which is often done in a physical storefront. What implication does this have for online merchants? What can they do to entice more online buying, rather than pure research? Name four improvements Web merchants could make to encourage more browsers to become buyers.
7. Name the five stages in the buyer decision process, and briefly describe the online and offline marketing activities used to influence each.
12, 13. List some of the major advantages of having a strong brand. How does a strong brand positively influence consumer purchasing? How are product positioning and branding related? How are they different?
16. Why have advertising networks become controversial? What, if anything, can be done to overcome any resistance to this technique?
17, 18. Which of the four market entry strategies is most lucrative? Compare and contrast the four marketing strategies used in mass marketing, direct marketing, micromarketing, and one-to-one marketing.
20, 22. Is price discrimination different from versioning? If so, how? Explain how versioning works. How is this different from dynamic pricing?
23. Why do companies that bundle products and services have an advantage over those that don’t or can’t offer this option?
sourced from Laudon, KC & Traver, CG 2013, E-commerce 2013: business, technology, society, 9th edn, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, pp 458-9 .
Module 08: e-Commerce Advertising
Teaching Objectives
• Identify the major forms of online marketing communications.
• Explain the costs and benefits of online marketing communications.
• Discuss the ways in which a Web site can be used as a marketing communications tool.
Questions for exploration and discussion
2. Explain the difference between branding communications and sales/promotional communications.
CR: Discuss the characteristic of the following types of ads and their known effects on users:
Display ads; Rich media ads; Video ads.
4. What kinds of products are most suited to being advertised online?
8. There is some controversy surrounding paid placements on search engines. What are some of the issues surrounding paid placement search engines? Why might consumers object to this practice?
9,10. What are some of the advantages of direct e-mail marketing? Why is offline advertising still important?
12. Define CTR, CPM, CPC, and CPA.
13. Discuss the key attributes of a good domain name and why it is important to business to ‘get it right’?
14. What are some of the steps a firm can take to optimize its search engine rankings?
CR: Discuss the elements that contribute to making a Website an effective marketing communication tool.
sourced from Laudon, KC & Traver, CG 2013, E-commerce 2013: business, technology, society, 9th edn, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, pp 522-3.
Module 09: Ethics, Law and E-Commerce
Teaching Objectives
• Explain why e-commerce raises ethical, social, and political issues.
• Identify the main ethical, social, and political issues raised by e-commerce.
• Identify a process for analyzing ethical dilemmas.
• Explain basic concepts related to privacy.
• Identify the practices of e-commerce companies that threaten privacy.
• Describe the different methods used to protect online privacy.
• Explain the various forms of intellectual property and the challenges involved in protecting it.
• Explain how the governance of the Internet has evolved over time.
• Explain why taxation of e-commerce raises governance and jurisdiction issues.
• Identify major public safety and welfare issues raised by e-commerce.
Questions for exploration and discussion
1,2 What basic assumptions does the study of ethics make about individuals? What are the three basic principles of ethics? How does due process factor in?
4. Define universalism, slippery slope, the New York Times test, and the social contract rule as they apply to ethics
6, 7. Name some of the personal information collected by Web sites about their visitors. How does information collected through online forms differ from site transaction logs? Which potentially provides a more complete consumer profile?
8, 9. How is the opt-in model of informed consent different from opt-out? In which type of model does the consumer retain more control? What are the two core principles of the FTC’s Fair Information Practice Principles?
11, 12. Name three ways online advertising networks have improved on, or added to, traditional offline marketing techniques. Explain how Web profiling is supposed to benefit both consumers and businesses.
14. How could the Internet potentially change the protection given to intellectual property? What capabilities make it more difficult to enforce intellectual property law?
15. What does the Digital Millennium Copyright Act attempt to do? Why was it enacted? What types of violations does it try to prevent?
16. Define cybersquatting. How is it different from cyberpiracy? What type of intellectual property violation does cybersquatting entail?
sourced from Laudon, KC & Traver, CG 2013, E-commerce 2013: business, technology, society, 9th edn, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, pp 604-4.
Module 10
Part A: Online Media
Teaching Objectives
• Identify the major trends in the consumption of media and online content, and the main revenue models for digital content delivery.
• Understand digital rights management.
• Discuss the concept of media convergence and the challenges it faces.
• Explain the key factors affecting the online publishing industry.
• Explain the key factors affecting the online entertainment industry.
Questions for exploration and discussion
‘1. What are the three dimensions where the term “convergence” has been applied? What does each of these areas of convergence entail?
‘ 2. What are the basic revenue models for online content and what is their major challenge?
‘4. What effect is the growth of tablet computing having on online entertainment and content?
’10. What are the advantages and disadvantages of e-book content?
’15. Why is the growth of cloud storage services important to the growth of mobile content delivery?
’16. Has the average consumer become more receptive to advertising-supported Internet content? What developments support this?
’17. What factors are needed to support successfully charging the consumer for online content?
sourced from Laudon, KC & Traver, CG 2013, E-commerce 2013: business, technology, society, 9th edn, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, pp 666-7.
Part B: Social Networks and Communities
Teaching Objectives
• Explain the difference between a traditional social network and an online social network.
• Explain how a social network differs from a portal.
• Describe the different types of social networks and online communities and their business models.
• Describe the major types of auctions, their benefits and costs, and how they operate.
• Explain when to use auctions in a business.
• Recognize the potential for auction abuse and fraud.
• Describe the major types of Internet portals.
• Explain the business models of portals.
Questions for exploration and discussion
‘1, 2. What factors enable some online social networks to prosper today? How does a social network differ from a portal? How are the two similar?
‘4. What is personalization or personal value pricing and how can it be used at the beginning of a product’s life cycle to increase revenues?
‘5,6. List and briefly explain three of the benefits of auction markets. What are the four major costs to consumers of participating in an auction?
‘7,8. Under what conditions does a seller bias exist in an auction market? When does a buyer bias exist? What are the two price allocation rules in auction markets? Explain the difference.
’11,12. What three characteristics define a portal site today? What is a vertical market portal and how might recent trends in consumer behavior prove advantageous to this business model?
’13,14. What are the two main types of vertical market portals and how are they distinguished from one another? List and briefly explain the main revenue sources for the portal business model.
sourced from Laudon, KC & Traver, CG 2013, E-commerce 2013: business, technology, society, 9th edn, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, p. 721.