Discussion: Credit card companies
Discussion: Credit card companies
Strategic Use of Information Resources
Industry Competitors Rivalry among the firms competing within an industry is high when it is expensive for a firm to leave the industry, the growth rate of the industry is declining, or products have lost differentiation. Under these circumstances, the firm must focus on the competitive actions of rivals to protect its own market share. Intense rivalry in an industry ensures that competitors respond quickly to any strategic actions. Facebook enjoys a competitive advantage in the social networking industry. Other sites have tried to compete with Facebook by offering a different focus, either a different type of interface or additional ways to network. Competition is fierce and many start‐ups hope to “be the next Facebook.” However, Facebook continues to lead the industry, in part by continued innovation and in part by its huge customer base, which continues to raise the bar for competitors.
The processes that firms use to manage their operations and to lower costs or increase efficiencies can provide an advantage for cost‐focus firms. However, as firms within an industry begin to implement standard business processes and technologies—often using enterprisewide systems such as those of SAP and Oracle—the industry becomes more attractive to consolidation through acquisition. Standardizing IS lowers the coordination costs of merging two enterprises and can result in a less competitive environment in the industry.
One way competitors differentiate themselves with an otherwise undifferentiated product is through creative use of IS. Information provides advantages in such competition when added to an existing product. For example, the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and iWatch are differentiated in part because of the iTunes store and the applications available only to users of these devices. Competitors offer some of the same information services, but Apple was able to take an early lead by using information systems to differentiate their products. Credit card companies normally compete on financial services such as interest rate, fees, and payment period. But Capital One differentiated its credit cards by adding information to its services; it provided customers their credit scores.
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
