E- Business & Marketing Fundamentals

ABS – BBA
Assignment – 2022

STUDENT ID

UNIT TITLE: ___________________________________________________

NAME (in Full): ___________________________________________________

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

● All assignments are to be submitted on 9th May 2022 at

https://www.atmsstudentgateway.com with the login credentials shared earlier.

● If assignment is not submitted on date, will follow a penalty of 10%-mark deduction.

• Any Assignment submission extension request must come to Azra Fatima
(Head: Examination | Academic) - afatima@atmsedu.org 5 days before the date of
submission with a valid reason and supported documentary evidence.
● Similarity between students’ work is strictly not accepted, any student found with similar
work will be graded Zero and fail for the course. However, Plagiarism is an academic
offence and will not be tolerated.
● Any re-evaluation request should come in one week of grade release. Any late request will
not be obliged. (Form and other details shall be shared based on request)
● Any rescheduling request should come and fulfilled within two months after the actual
date of the assessment. Any late request will not be obliged.
● Assignment once submitted to exam board is final for marking.
● Total 90 marks. 10 Marks for Class Participation. Final marks will be converted to 90 marks

GUIDELINES FOR ASSIGNMENT

a) If assignment is Question & Answer based, then.

• Introduction is needed for each question.
• Question has to be answered based on the mark allotted for each question with references if

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 any idea or information is taken from other source.
b) If assignment is case based then,
• Executive summary
• Table of content
• Introduction
• Body of assignment (questions related to case need to be answered)
• Conclusion / Recommendation if any
• References (in-text + citation) to be used.

Total Marks / 90

PLAGIARISM

Plagiarism is a form of cheating, by representing someone else's work as your own or using someone
else's work (another student or author) without acknowledging it with a reference. This is a serious
breach of the Academic Regulations and will be dealt with accordingly. Students found to have
plagiarized can be excluded from the program.

Plagiarism occurs whenever you do any of the following things without acknowledging the original
source:

✓ Copy information from any source (including the study guide, books, newspapers, the internet)
✓ Use another person's concepts or ideas
✓ Summarize or paraphrase another person's work.

How do I avoid plagiarism?

To ensure you are not plagiarizing, you must acknowledge with a reference whenever you:

✓ use another person's ideas, opinions or theory

✓ include any statistics, graphs or images that have been compiled or created by another person or
organization
✓ Paraphrase another's written or spoken word.

What are the penalties?

The penalties for plagiarism are:

✓ Deduction of marks,
✓ A mark of zero for the assignment or the unit, or
✓ Exclusion from the program.
Plagiarism is dealt with on a case-by-case basis and the penalties will reflect the seriousness of the
breach. Please note claiming that you were not aware of need to reference is no excuse.

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 Read the case studies thoroughly and respond to all of the questions.
Word Limit: 3500 words

Case Study I

WWW.oag.com
Prior to the development of the internet the leading authority of airline timetables was Official
Airline Guide (OAG) who published the definitive guide to all commercial air travel on a global
scale. The OAG publication of timetables ran to three volumes and was updated every month.
For many years prior to the commercialization of the internet OAG was the industry authority
on all aspects of airline timetabling and a source of valuable information for travel agents,
business travelers, airline executives and even plane spotters. However, by the mid-1990s the
company’s market dominance came under threat from new entrants into the market who were
adopting new technology in the form of the internet to collect, store and disseminate up-to-the-
minute information on airline timetabling.
OAG was being disintermediated from the supply chain of information. In particular, airlines
had developed their own computerized inventory system that allowed agents to see flights and
book them directly. The emergence of budget airlines, such as Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) and
easyJet (www.easyjet.com), enabled customers to cut out the middleman and book flights
directly using the internet. The decline in sales for OAG meant that the publishers, Reed
Elsevier, decided to sell the business to a venture capitalist company for $1.
To survive, OAG had to pursue reintermediation into the supply chain of information. By 2002
the company had invested some £15 million in new technology that was to be the basis of the
business. The key added value OAG could offer to business clients and customers was their
expertise in the compilation of timetables. With 30 million flights annually, managing the data
is a complex and precise process. The company electronically alters around 13 000 units of
data in timetables every day. The technology allows OAG to manage and distribute the data
more effectively. The company has developed integrated systems so that customers can access
information via numerous devices including interactive television and mobile phones.
Information is also available in many different languages and packaged to appeal to different
types of customers.
1. Airlines had developed their own computerized inventory system that allowed agents
to see flights and book them directly. Analyze the impact of e-business on airlines?
2. What benefits do e-businesses bring to the airline industry?
3. What are the challenges faced by the airline industry during the transition to its new
computerized inventory system?
4. E- business initiatives enabled customers to cut out the middleman and book flights
directly using the internet. Evaluate the important roles of e-business in the interface
between an airline and its customers.

(Marks: 45)

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 Case Study II

APPLE COMPUTER:
FROM MAC TO IMAC AND IPOD

In 1998 Steve Jobs re-joined Apple Computer at a nominal salary of $1 per annum to try to
rescue the company which he had created. Twenty years earlier Jobs with his buddy, Steve
Wozniak, conceived the Apple I, which many believe was the world’s first personal computer
(PC). The Apple II followed and Apple went public as a result of sharply increased sales.
Growth took off in 1984 with the launch of the Macintosh which was considered to be the
easiest to use and best loved computer ever designed. The ‘Mac’, as it is affectionately known
by enthusiasts, was launched with much publicity which has been considered to be the greatest
advertising ever made. The best feature of the Mac was its ease of use and, ten years later, 13m
Macs had been shipped. However, Apple itself was in trouble. In 1995 the company
experienced declining share and profitability and seemed puny against the giant Microsoft
Corporation. Where did Apple go wrong? Has it managed to claw its way back since?
Several answers suggest themselves. Apple spent many years pursuing a series of law suits
against other companies, including Microsoft, in a bid to protect its unique operating system.
Apple took Microsoft through the US court system and right to the Supreme Court over the
claim that Microsoft Windows illegally copied parts of the Macintosh user interface (anon.,
1995). At the same time major anti-trust actions were being taken against Microsoft. However,
Apple lost its copyright action against Microsoft in 1992. The legal action is itself taken as
symptomatic of a fundamental mistake which some analysts believe Apple made in the early
1980s, in that it did not allow others to license its operating system. This was when the then
mighty IBM launched its (much inferior) PC which quickly entrenched itself in the corporate
market where ‘Big Blue’ had an unrivalled reputation. By comparison with IBM Apple was
considered to be a renegade company by the men in suits.
The attractiveness of the PC and its relatively cumbersome operating system Windows
designed by Bill Gates of Microsoft increased. In the late 1980s IBM’s share of the PC market
slipped as clone manufacturers gained a greater hold of the market, offering very competitive
prices and good-quality products (Day-Copeland, 1988). By comparison, Apple discouraged
clones and sought to protect its operating system (anon., 1997). For IBM the PC was a side-
line, a diversion from its core business of churning out larger, more powerful mainframe
computers. But it sold in millions. Unfortunately, IBM failed to secure exclusive rights to either
Intel’s chip or Microsoft’s operating software, which led to hundreds of ‘clones’ of its new PC
coming on to the market. All were based on the same Intel chips and Microsoft operating
software, which together rapidly became the industry standard. The clones sold in even more
millions than IBM’s original. IBM’s share of what was to become by far the largest sector of

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 the computer industry collapsed: from close to 100 per cent in the early 1980s to well below
10 per cent in the late 1990s. The revolution introduced by the PC was both swift and brutal.
From a standing start in the early 1980s, sales of PCs soared to around 50m a year globally.
This market is worth $74bn (£41bn) annually, according to Dataquest, a market research
company based in San Jose, California, and compares with global sales of 35m passenger cars
and 100m color television sets.
As PCs became more popular so software developers began to focus more on providing
material for the mainstream PC–Windows market first and later for the Mac. This led to users
who prized the user-friendliness of the Mac becoming more disillusioned with Apple, as they
witnessed the growing prestige and available pool of software applications for the PC. Apple
was perceived as being second best.
In 1997 Steve Jobs went back to Apple after a thirteen-year exile. Jobs had been banished from
Apple by John Sculley, who had been brought in from Pepsi to strengthen Apple’s marketing
as market share and profits fell. Sculley was himself dismissed in 1993 after a period that saw
Apple’s market share drop from 20 per cent to 8 per cent. His replacement Michael Spindler
lasted until 1996 when market share had fallen to 5 per cent and, with losses mounting, it was
feared that Apple would go into liquidation. Even diehard Apple loyalists who had held on to
their beloved Mac’s against the steady advance of the PC began to defect. Spindler was in turn
replaced by Dr Gil Amelio, who wrote about his traumatic 500 days when Apple’s market share
declined further to 4 per cent. Amelio invited Jobs back, but was then subsequently deposed
by Jobs.
Once again in command, Jobs set about the task of inspiring Apple employees to develop a
series of new products. Informing this was a simple vision: ‘There’s a very strong DNA within
Apple, and that’s about taking state-of-the-art technology and making it easy for people.’ Apple
is in the business of making complex technology accessible to those who lead busy lives and
who don’t want to spend their days reading manuals. Jobs disputes the conventional wisdom
that suggests that the television set and the computer are going to merge so that emailing and
Internet surfing can be done in the living room when not watching television, or with the
television occupying only a part of the screen. His belief is that when people surf the Net, they
do so in active mode with their brains switched on; when they go to a television set, they are
passive and go to turn their brain off.
In 1998 the first of the new products off the line, the iMac, was launched, a product which
prompted Keegan (1998:2) to gush that it was:
Sleekly designed in translucent blue tones, and much easier to operate, it makes most other
computers – almost statutorily beige in color – look like something from a science museum. It
is the nearest thing to Jobs’ vision of ‘the computer for the rest of us.’ Sales of iMac exceeded
expectations at 278,000 units in the first six weeks making it what Fortune magazine described
as ‘one of the hottest computers launches ever’.
The iMac was the embodiment of Jobs’ dream of a well-designed eye-catching computer that
was simple to operate. Then came the EMAC and then the powerful up-market G5 which
appealed to professionals. In 2004 the iMac and G5 were married in a startling new format, the
iMac G5, which integrated the processing hard drive into the screen assembly.
Alongside these developments in the computer field came a product that would have been
inconceivable before schoolboy Shawn Fanning developed Napster to challenge the global

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 music industry. Apple quickly identified an opportunity, launching IPOD in 2001 to capitalize
on the Napster phenomenon. In 2001 this allowed the consumer to bypass the rather tiresome
task of visiting a store and buying an overpriced CD by simply searching for the music they
wanted on a central website and then downloading the mp3 files direct to disc. What Apple did
was to provide a virtually unlimited space for consumers to store not only music that could be
played on the equivalent of a Walkman, but also photos and indeed anything that could be
stored digitally.
1. What alternative marketing strategies might Apple have followed?
2. Why did Apple consistently lose market space despite the Mac being the most user-
friendly computer ever made?
3. Discuss the marketing mix opted for Mac by Apple Inc and suggest recommendations
for further improvement.
4. Identify some current opportunities and threats that Steve Jobs came across during the
transition from mac to iMac and iPod.

(Marks: 45)

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