How has the speed of transactions made possible by the Internet had a positive impact on your life? What are some of the ways the impact has been negative?
Identify a product or service that you frequently purchase. Identify all of its value components. Which are the most important? Which are you are most frequently dissatisfied with?
Examine a process on your campus that you are familiar with. What steps in it do not add value? What are the costs, for the customer, associated with these steps? What are the costs for the university? In what ways would the process be improved if the non-value-adding steps were removed?
Identify and describe a business you are familiar with that has had to adapt to increasing levels of competition. Where has the competition come from? How has the business changed in response? Have its changes been successful?
Identify and describe a business you are familiar with that has had to adapt to increasing competition from an Internet-based business. How has it changed? Has it been successful?
How do most students prioritize cost, quality, and timeliness for services? For products?
Consider a recent significant purchase you made. Beyond the price, what other costs were associated with that purchase? Did they affect your purchase decision?
What changes have you observed in products and services that indicate pressures on business to have less impact on the natural environment? Have these changes had an impact on your purchase decisions?
Describe a business whose major focus is difficult to classify as either a product or a service. What makes it difficult to categorize? Which parts of the business would be the most difficult to manage—producing the services or producing the products? Why?
Identify a product or service that would likely be purchased by both consumers and businesses. How might the B2B and the B2C customers differ in terms of how each defines value? What components of value would be the most important for each?
Exhibit 1.6 provides examples of businesses that fit into the business output/ customer matrix. Identify two businesses with which you are not familiar that provide products and/or services to businesses. Explain what each does.
