WK1 DF CIS 230 Mgmt Information Systems

Module 1

Discuss the three strategies for successfully competing in the marketplace of Overall cost leadership, Differentiation, and Focus. Provide an example of a business that is using one of these strategies to compete in the marketplace and discuss how the business is using technologies to implement the strategy. Find an example other than those discussed in the book (i.e., do not use Walmart using overall cost leadership, Apple using differentiation and focus, and Abercrombie & Fitch and Nordstrom using focus).

Focused cost leadership is the first of two focus strategies. A focused cost leadership strategy requires competing based on price to target a narrow market. A firm that follows this strategy does not necessarily charge the lowest prices in the industry. Instead, it charges low prices relative to other firms that compete within the target market. For example, you might be able to buy milk cheaper by driving to a big-box grocery store in your local community or town, but the local corner store is the cheapest within walking distance. Redbox, a major DVD rental company, uses vending machines placed outside grocery stores and other retail outlets to rent DVDs of movies for $1. There are ways to view movies even cheaper, such as through the flat-fee streaming video subscriptions offered by Netflix. But among firms that rent actual DVDs, Redbox offers unparalleled levels of low price and high convenience.

Another important point is that the nature of the narrow target market varies across firms that use a focused cost leadership strategy. In some cases, the target market is defined by demographics. Claires, for example, seeks to appeal to young women by selling inexpensive jewelry, accessories, and ear piercings. Claires use of a focused cost leadership strategy has been very successful; the firm has about 50 locations in Canada, located in shopping malls.

Focused differentiation is the second of two focus strategies. A focused differentiation strategy requires offering unique features that fulfill the demands of a narrow market. As with a focused low-cost strategy, narrow markets are defined in different ways in different settings. Some firms using a focused differentiation strategy concentrate their efforts on a particular sales channel, such as selling over the Internet only. Others target particular demographic groups. One example is Breezes Resorts, a company that caters to couples without children. The firm operates seven tropical resorts where vacationers are guaranteed that they will not be annoyed by loud and disruptive children. While a differentiation strategy involves offering unique features that appeal to a variety of customers, the need to satisfy the desires of a narrow market means that the pursuit of uniqueness is often taken to the proverbial next level by firms using a focused differentiation strategy. Thus, the unique features provided by firms following a focused differentiation strategy are often specialized.

Module 2

Discuss the potential of computer output to voice. What are some of the applications of this technology and what are the advantages and disadvantages?

The recognition of speech by machine, being more highly dependent on autonomous information processing arrived much later. This first machine was limited to spoken digits but was quickly followed by a more comprehensive machine due to Homer Dudley and his co-workers at the same laboratories that attempted to recognize all speech sounds and a programmable vocabulary, based on those sounds. However, vastly more information processing power was required, partly to gather the data needed to design such a machine, and partly to carry out the real-time processing needed to make such a device viable. Even today, aided by enormously powerful computers, we lack some of the fundamental speech knowledge needed to solve even the basic problems of voice synthesis and recognition by machine.

There are a variety of advantages to using speech for communication. Unfortunately, some of these remain unrealized with less than comprehensive performance on the part of the machine. There are also some disadvantages. The most obvious advantage is that speech is the normal form of interactive communication between people and is thus natural to use for interaction with machines. Between people, speech allows a freer, more forceful use of language, because it is aided by contextual, situational, and all manner of linguistic and paralinguistic features (voice tone, rhythm, the rise and fall of pitch so-called intonation, gestures, pauses, and emphasis) that are simply absent from the written form.