Accounting
Anthropology
Archaeology
Art History
Banking
Biology & Life Science
Business
Business Communication
Business Development
Business Ethics
Business Law
Chemistry
Communication
Computer Science
Counseling
Criminal Law
Curriculum & Instruction
Design
Earth Science
Economic
Education
Engineering
Finance
History & Theory
Humanities
Human Resource
International Business
Investments & Securities
Journalism
Law
Management
Marketing
Medicine
Medicine & Health Science
Nursing
Philosophy
Physic
Psychology
Real Estate
Science
Social Science
Sociology
Special Education
Speech
Visual Arts
Business Development
Q:
When a market is characterized by mature enabling technologies, a firm should enter the market late.
Q:
Other things being equal, less customer uncertainty favors earlier timing of entry.
Q:
All pioneers face customer uncertainty.
Q:
Late entrants typically bear the bulk of the research and development expenses for their product or service technologies.
Q:
First movers typically invest more in exploratory research than late entrants.
Q:
In an industry characterized by increasing returns to adoption, there can be powerful advantages to being an early provider.
Q:
The initial cost of a good itself can be a switching cost.
Q:
Early followers enter the market only after a product begins to penetrate the mass market.
Q:
Early leaders are firms that are the first to enter a market.
Q:
What is vaporware? What are its advantages?
Q:
How is a dominant design likely to influence the nature of the technological discontinuity that will eventually replace it?
Q:
Explain the concepts of network externalities and installed base.
Q:
What is absorptive capacity? Why do firms that fall behind the technology frontier find it difficult to catch up?
Q:
Explain how the more a technology is adopted, the better it becomes.
Q:
When are winner-take-all markets good for consumers?
A. When monopoly costs exceed the value of network externality returns
B. When monopoly costs exceed the value of technological utility
C. When the monopoly cost curve is extremely steep
D. When the value of technology utility and network externality returns exceeds monopoly costs
Q:
Which of the following statements is true of a monopoly cost curve?
A. Monopoly costs to market share curve is more s-shaped than network externality returns to market share curve.
B. The steepness of the monopoly cost curve is largely a function of a firm's discretionary behavior.
C. It is not possible for a network externality returns curve to cross a monopoly cost curve.
D. A firm choosing to exploit its monopoly power is flattening its monopoly costs curve.
Q:
Future Electronics Inc.'s body scanning machine has been adopted by majority of the healthcare market. As a result, the company demands a high price from its customers, which mainly include hospitals. It is not investing much on innovation and its product variety is also very low. This cost borne by the users in this case is referred to as:
A. marginal cost.
B. social cost.
C. monopoly cost.
D. deferred cost.
Q:
When users are comparing the value of a new technology to an existing technology, they are said to be using objective information when the comparison is based on:
A. anticipated technological benefits.
B. future prediction regarding the availability of complementary goods.
C. perceived installed base.
D. actual technological benefits.
Q:
Oswen Technologies Inc., a software development company, spent a lot of money in advertising software products that were not in the market. However, the firm hoped to bring these products to the market at a later date. The software products advertised before their availability are termed _____.
A. puffery
B. vaporware
C. first refusal units
D. advertising rollouts
Q:
A new technology is most likely to be successful in displacing an existing technology when:
A. its installed base is significantly less than that of the existing technology.
B. the new technology competes only on the value of its stand-alone utility.
C. it eclipses the combined value of the existing technology's stand-alone utility, its installed base, and its complementary goods.
D. the new technology's perceived and anticipated components of value are lower than its actual components of value.
Q:
The U.S. Postal Service now offers a "Click-N-Ship" online service where users can buy and print postage and labels online. According to the Buyer Utility Map, the U.S. Postal Service is offering the _____ utility lever, during the _____ stage of buyer experience cycle.
A. risk; use
B. fun and image; maintenance
C. convenience; purchase
D. environmental friendliness; disposal
Q:
TechSense, an electronics manufacturing firm, allows its customers to resell old TechSense products at its retail outlets. The firm reuses the metal, wires, and plasticextracted from these old productsin its new products. This way the company has been able to take waste management to a whole new level. According to the Buyer Utility Map, the firm is applying environmental friendliness utility lever in the _____ stage of buyer experience cycle.
A. supplements
B. purchase
C. use
D. disposal
Q:
Earth Love Electronics Inc. has developed a lawn mower that runs on solar power. The lawn mowers are available in all local supermarkets and several electronic stores. According to the Buyer Utility Map, the company is trying to offer convenience utility in the _____ stage.
A. supplements
B. purchase
C. disposal
D. maintenance
Q:
Which of the following statements is true of dominant design?
A. It is not possible to have legally induced adherence to a dominant design.
B. When a firm's technology is locked in as the dominant design of a market, it earns low rewards.
C. A firm that supports a technology that is chosen as the dominant design is in a poor position to shape the evolution of the industry.
D. A firm may find itself locked out of the market if it is unable to adopt the dominant technology.
Q:
Increasing returns to adoption imply that technology trajectories are characterized by _____, meaning that relatively small historical events may have a great impact on the final outcome.
A. the ratchet effect
B. the funnel effect
C. corrugated anomalies
D. path dependency
Q:
Arica Software Inc. is trying to estimate the installed base for its software. It is trying to assess the number of:
A. substitutes available for its software.
B. developers working on its software.
C. areas in which its software can be applied.
D. users of its software.
Q:
The value of an electronic reader is related to the availability of books, journals, magazines, etc., in a format that can be read by the electronic reader. For an electronic reader, these are _____ goods.
A. complementary
B. substitute
C. Giffen
D. intermediate
Q:
Money Club and Money Ball are online platforms that allow their members to get in touch with people from various businesses. They also facilitate business contracts between their members. Money Club has 6,000 members, whereas Money Ball has 3,500 members. This indicates that:
A. Money Club has a larger installed base than Money Ball.
B. Money Club has a lower positive consumption externality than Money Ball.
C. Money Ball provides more complementary goods than Money Club.
D. Money Ball does not use a dominant design.
Q:
As firms develop complementary technologies to improve the productivity or ease of utilization of a core technology, the technology:
A. becomes more attractive to other firms.
B. loses its credibility in the market.
C. loses its dominant design position in the industry.
D. experiences a decrease in its installed base.
Q:
Firms that develop new technologies ahead of others often try a number of unsuccessful techniques before finding a solution that works well. This experimentation:
A. lowers the firm's ability to recognize the value of new information.
B. lowers the firm's ability to develop and enhance technologies.
C. makes it difficult for the firm to develop related technologies.
D. enables the firm to find related solutions and alternatives that work well.
Q:
Clear Vision Inc. has been the market leader for vision care products such as eyeglasses and lenses. It has also recently developed the use of laser technology to correct eye defects. Due to its prior related experiences, it has been successful in recognizing the value of new information and using it to develop new technologies ahead of others. This phenomenon is called:
A. absorptive capacity.
B. disintermediation.
C. technology determinism.
D. technology retardation.
Q:
Which of the following statements is true of learning effects?
A. There are substantial differences in the rates at which organizations learn.
B. The learning rate is impervious to organizational factors such as firm strategy.
C. As a technology is adopted, further development and refining of the technology reduces.
D. The cost of producing a unit rises as the number of units produced increases.
Q:
The more a technology is adopted:
A. the less valuable it becomes on account of market saturation.
B. the more susceptible it becomes to decreasing returns of adoption.
C. the greater are the opportunities for development of complementary assets.
D. the lesser are the possibilities for improvements in the technology and its applications.
Q:
Neon Electronics Inc. is an electronics manufacturing company. It has adopted a dominant design for its television audio speakers. Which of the following statements is most likely to be true in this scenario?
A. Neon Electronics will have to invest heavily in R&D to come up with new designs for the audio speakers.
B. Neon Electronics will face decreasing returns to its adoption of the dominant design.
C. Neon Electronics will have increased opportunities to develop complementary assets.
D. The design adopted by Neon Electronics will be unpopular among most of the other manufacturers.
Q:
Network externality returns refers to the value customers reap as a larger portion of the market adopts the same good.
Q:
When an industry has network externalities, the value of a good to a user is more likely to go up linearly rather than increase in an s-shape.
Q:
In industries characterized by network externalities, the value of a technological innovation to users will be a function only of its stand-alone benefits and cost.
Q:
Since perceived or expected installed base may drive subsequent adoptions, a large perceived or expected installed base can lead to a large actual installed base.
Q:
Technologically superior products do not always win in the market.
Q:
The influence of a dominant design can extend beyond its own technology cycle.
Q:
A legally induced adherence to a dominant design is not possible.
Q:
Products that have a large installed base are likely to attract more developers of complementary goods.
Q:
Network externalities cannot arise in markets that do not have physical networks.
Q:
In a market characterized by network externalities, the benefit from using a good decreases with an increase in the number of other users of the same good.
Q:
As firms develop complementary technologies to improve the productivity or ease of utilization of the core technology, the technology becomes less attractive to other firms.
Q:
The ability of an organization to recognize, assimilate, and utilize new knowledge is referred to as learning trajectory.
Q:
Though learning curves are found in a wide range of organizational processes, there are substantial differences in the rates at which organizations learn.
Q:
The learning curve indicates that the more units a company produces of an item, the more each unit will cost.
Q:
Increasing returns to adoption means that the more a technology is adopted, the more valuable it becomes.
Q:
Briefly define Everett M. Roger's five adopter categories and explain how a marketer might use this knowledge.
Q:
Explain what Schumpeter meant by the term creative destruction.
Q:
What are the factors that determine whether switching to a new technology will benefit a firm?
Q:
How can the s-curves be used as a prescriptive tool? What would be the limitations of this approach?
Q:
Briefly explain the different types of innovation.
Q:
Alpha Information Inc. is a firm that manufactures desktop computers and wireless network hardware components. The company is spending heavily on R&D to experiment with new designs for wireless networks instead of trying to refine how well they make their current wireless network hardware components. The firm is going through a period of ambiguity and anxiety. Alpha Information Inc. is in the:
A. dominant design phase.
B. era of incremental change.
C. era of ferment.
D. specific phase.
Q:
According to Anderson and Tushman, in the era of incremental change, firms:
A. attempt to achieve lower market segmentation by offering different models and price points.
B. undergo a period of turbulence and uncertainty.
C. focus on efficiency and market penetration.
D. focus on altering the architecture rather than improving components.
Q:
Once a new product design becomes a dominant design:
A. the product is no longer profitable.
B. it becomes difficult for competitors to imitate.
C. the architecture on which the industry can focus its efforts is destabilized.
D. the product design is adopted by the majority of producers.
Q:
Donald is always ready to buy recently launched gadgets and gizmos. Since he has sufficient financial resources to invest in these products, he is unconcerned about the risks and uncertainties involved in buying new products. Based on this description, Donald most likely belongs to the group of:
A. early majority.
B. early adopters.
C. innovators.
D. laggards.
Q:
Iris is quite skeptical about new innovations and is most likely to adopt something new only after experiencing peer pressure to adopt the new innovation. However, she is not so risk averse that she will wait until all uncertainty of a new technology has been resolved; she is willing to accept a little uncertainty if her peers already use the product. Which of the following adopter categories does Iris belong to?
A. Early adopters
B. Innovators
C. Late majority
D. Laggards
Q:
A marketing research company categorized Jane as an early adopter. Which of the following would be true of Jane in this context?
A. She does not adopt an innovation until she feels pressure from her peers.
B. She is well integrated into her social system.
C. She has a skeptical attitude toward new ideas.
D. She has a low potential for opinion leadership.
Q:
Ron is highly skeptical about new ideas and products. He has not yet bought a satellite television subscription for his home because he is still unsure of its benefits. Ron is also concerned about the expense of getting such a connection. According to this description, Ron:
A. is an innovator.
B. belongs to the early majority.
C. is a laggard.
D. is an early adopter.
Q:
The CEO of a pharmaceutical company asked his consultant if it was a good idea to implement the s-curve model to predict when a technology would reach its limits. The consultant identified a limitation in the use of the model. Which of the following is most likely the limitation identified by the consultant?
A. Firms cannot influence the shape of the s-curve through their developmental activities.
B. Unexpected changes in the market can alter the shape of a technology's s-curve.
C. S-curve models cannot be applied in the pharmaceutical industry.
D. S-curve models are outdated and unrealistic.
Q:
Which of the following statements is true of technology diffusion?
A. S-curves in technology diffusion are obtained by plotting performance against time.
B. Technology diffusion is much faster than information diffusion.
C. A drop in the price of a new technology can accelerate technology diffusion.
D. Adoption is initially fast when a new technology is introduced to the market.
Q:
S-curves in technology diffusion are obtained by plotting the:
A. capacity of a technology against time.
B. cumulative number of adopters of a technology against time.
C. performance speed of a technology against effort.
D. performance power of a technology against effort.
Q:
When the first personal computers were introduced, Bill started using a spreadsheet program to maintain his accounts. Bill discovered that this new method of maintaining his accounts caused his work to become much slower and that if he typed in the wrong data, it led to more mistakes. This scenario illustrates that:
A. effort invested in an existing technology reaps higher returns than effort invested in a new technology.
B. effort invested in an incumbent technology is much higher than effort invested in a new technology.
C. technological discontinuity may initially have lower performance than the incumbent technology.
D. component innovations are more effective than architectural innovations.
Q:
Digital cameras replaced film cameras. Therefore, digital cameras are an example of _____.
A. modular innovation
B. incremental technology
C. component innovation
D. discontinuous technology
Q:
When gutter shields were developed, they replaced gutter cleaning services hired by homeowners to keep leaves and debris out of their gutters. In other words, the same need was met by an entirely new technology. This is an example of a(n) _____ technology.
A. complementary
B. component
C. discontinuous
D. incremental
Q:
In the context of s-curve in technological improvement, plotting performance against time will result in the same characteristic curve as plotting performance against effort only if:
A. speed, a function of performance, is relatively constant over time.
B. effort is relatively constant over time.
C. power, a function of performance, is relatively inconsistent over time.
D. effort varies over time.
Q:
Which of the following statements is true of s-curves in technological improvement?
A. They are obtained by plotting the cumulative number of adopters of the technology against time.
B. They typically show that technology goes through initial accelerated improvement, then diminishing improvement, then slow improvement.
C. S-curves in technology diffusion and s-curves in technology performance are fundamentally the same process.
D. The s-curves flatten when the cost of each marginal improvement increases and diminishing returns to effort begin to set in.
Q:
Dalton discovered that using garlic salt on a regular hamburger made the hamburger taste more like steak. He could then use a less expensive meat in the "smoked steak" sandwiches that he sold. This is an example of a(n) _____ innovation.
A. radical
B. discontinuous
C. architectural
D. component
Q:
Which of the following statements is true of component innovation?
A. Component innovation does not significantly affect the overall configuration of a system.
B. Component innovation is also called architectural innovation.
C. For a firm to initiate component innovation, knowledge about the whole system is necessary.
D. Component innovations have more far-reaching and complex influences on industry competitors and technology users than architectural innovations.
Q:
Which of the following statements is true of the different types of innovations?
A. Process innovations are more visible than product innovations.
B. An innovation that was once considered radical may eventually be considered incremental as the knowledge base underlying the innovation becomes more common.
C. An innovation is considered a component innovation if it significantly affects the overall configuration of the system of which it is a component.
D. Architectural innovation is also called modular innovation.
Q:
A bicycle manufacturing company adopted a new type of inventory management system. This inventory system improved the productivity of its manufacturing unit and the quality of its bicycles. This is an example of _____ innovation.
A. virtual
B. regressive
C. archaic
D. process
Q:
The path a technology follows through time is termed as _____.
A. technology map
B. technology trajectory
C. technology cluster
D. technology transfer
Q:
It is possible for a firm that follows an s-curve model too closely to end up switching technologies later than it should.
Q:
Firms cannot influence the shape of the s-curve through their development activities.
Q:
S-curves of technology diffusion are in part a function of the s-curves in technology improvement.
Q:
Technology diffusion and information diffusion take the same amount of time.
Q:
Technology diffusion curve is s-shaped because adoption is initially fast when a new technology is introduced to the market.
Q:
Technologies always get the opportunity to reach their performance limits before being replaced by a new technology.