Internet Exercises

4-1 DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS

Choose one Decision Support System homepage from the list maintained by Daniel Power at the University of Northern Iowa:

http://dss.cba.uni.edu/DJP/Companies.html

Write a succinct summary of the primary DSS product offered by the company you have chosen. What are its main features and functions? For what kinds of organizations (i.e., size, industry, etc.) would this system be most appropriate? Would it be applicable in a marketing research and planning context?

4-2 TYPICAL MARKETING RESEARCH PROJECTS

a) The authors have provided a list of typical marketing research projects. Which of these projects could be conducted effectively via an organization's web homepage? As you answer this question, keep in mind the pertinent issues of sampling and data collection. Also point out the pitfalls and limitations of such methods.

b) Now imagine that you are the webmaster (i.e., homepage manager) for your dream company. Briefly describe your company's mission. For those project types best suited to the web, construct a sketch of how you would conduct this research using current homepage technology. Again, what limitations must you keep in mind as you collect and analyze your data?

4-3 GATHERING COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE

Because so much of web space is available via unrestricted access, marketers have a unique opportunity to gather information about their competitors. For the purposes of this exercise, let's say you are a marketing executive for an international pleasure cruise line and your company is considering entry into the Caribbean cruise market. What can you do to find out about the competition you might encounter?

Using the search skills you developed in earlier exercises, collect as much information as you can about the competition. Some search engines you might want to try are:

Lycos http://www.lycos.com

Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com

AltaVista http://www.altavista.com

WebCrawler http://webcrawler.com

a) How many websites offering Caribbean cruise travel services did you find? How would you go about finding other information that the search engines might have missed? What other Internet resources could provide you with information relevant to your situation?

b) What are some other ways (i.e., non-Internet based) you could gather competitive intelligence?

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