The University Of Texas at Dallas

Spring 2001

Course: INTERNET BUSINESS MODELS
Classes: Monday / Wednesday – 10.30 a m to 12.30 pm.
Instructor: B.P.S. Murthi	Homepage: www.utdallas.edu/~murthi Username: mas6v05 Password : cmbaibm
Office: JO5.606	Telephone: 972-883-6355
Office Hours: Wednesday afternoon 2.00 – 4.00 pm or by appointment	Email: murthi@utdallas.edu

MATERIALS

You are required to obtain a case packet for the course, to be made available at the bookstore. There are 8 cases in the packet. There will be articles assigned for reading before class. The required textbook is:

1. Principles of Internet Marketing - Ward Hanson, South-Western College Publishing, 1999

CLASS FORMAT

Most classes will consist of a lecture, a case analysis, and a presentation by students. We will also try and get industry speakers from time to time. There is an explosion of information on e-commerce. Since it is difficult for a single person to update information at such a rapid rate, the class will facilitate this process. Each group will collect interesting information from the web (e-NEWS) about one chosen industry and present it in class.

GRADES

Course grades will be determined by your performance on case reports, scores on examinations, project and class participation. The weight given to each of the activities is given below.

Activity	Weight
Class Participation	10 %
Assignments -	10 %
Case analysis (1 case)	20 %
Final Exam	40 %
Group Project	20 %
Total	100

Class participation grade is subjective grade and will be based on

· Preparation for the class: whether the student has read the case, understands the issues and concepts involved, etc.

· Completion of the reading exercises using the internet.

· Participation: whether the student participates in the discussion and contributes to the analysis, and

· Attendance.

Case Preparation: Every student should go to the website of the company that is going to be discussed in class and prepare a page of notes to answer the questions that are to be discussed in the case analysis, that is financial performance of the company, what the web site offers, partners, mergers and acquisitions etc. Students will submit these notes to me after the class.

Cases will be graded mainly on the value added through analysis.

In order to encourage groups to prepare a professional report the following weights will be used.

1	Introduction – What does this company do? What is its value proposition to each of its customers?	10%
2	Who are its major competitors – what are their critical strengths and weaknesses, how they position themselves in the markets, are they focusing on specific market segments	15%
3	What are the critical success factors in this industry? Who are its suppliers and its complementors? Who are its important strategic partners?	15%
4	Research - Collect and present latest financial and strategic information from the company’s website and other sources. How do these affect their future prospects.	20%
5	Added value to the material presented in the case. Critical evaluation of whether the company will do well in the future and reasons to support your conclusion. What activities would you recommend that they should do to improve their chances of success? Analysis to support your recommendations.	30%
6	Overall presentation of the report, organization of thoughts and information (e.g. tables, graphs), spelling, grammar, etc. Is it a well-written report?	10%
	Total	100

GROUP PROJECT

Students will form a group and write a case about any firm that competes in the e-commerce space. The case should look like a Harvard Business School Case in terms of organization and writing style. The focus is on marketing and strategic issues faced by this firm rather than information technology or finance or other aspects of management. In the case, the following topics could be covered:

· History of the firm

· Profile of the founders

· Competitors and their positioning

· Firm’s marketing practices – advertising, promotions, pricing, business model

· Firm’s partners – technology alliances, distribution partners, promotional alliance partners, suppliers

· Critical success factors for this industry

· Assess the firm’s performance – Market share, sales, profits, budgets

· Projections for how this company is going to do in the near future

Sample firms that could be considered are:

· Seibel

· Ariba / Commerce One / I2 Technologies

· AOL

· RSA Security / Internet Security Systems

· Exodus

· Veritas, Verisign

· Double Click

Students should choose industries that are different from the cases that are selected for this course.

Exams are closed book, multiple choice and short answer questions. Emphasis will be on testing of basic concepts and application of these concepts to actual situations.

ACADEMIC HONESTY

UTD has clear policies on academic dishonesty, which includes cheating on an exam, plagiarism, collusion, and falsifying academic records. These activities will not be tolerated in this class. Please look at the catalog for more information on this topic.

In this course, collaboration is permitted on all group projects including case analysis and final project. No cooperation or collaboration is allowed on homework assignments and exams. Appropriate action will be initiated against students who violate this policy.

schedule

Date	Topics	Assignments
Mar 19	Introduction to the course – topics covered, expectations and grades Book chapters 1-3 Lecture on Business Models, Business Strategy, Co-opetition
Mar 21	Case: Dell Online	News: Group
Mar 26	The Emerging Digital Economy - read Chapter 4 http://www.ecommerce.gov/emerging.htm Business Week Special report : "The Battle of the Portals" http://www.businessweek.com/1998/36/specrep.htm Book chapters 5, 6
Mar 28	Case: Schwab A & B	News: Group
Apr 2	Business to Consumer marketing (B2C) - Understanding Online behavior Online communities Armstrong, Arthur and John Hagel (1996),"Real value of Online Communities," Harvard Business Review, May-Jun. Book chapters 4, 10	HW – 1
Apr 4	Case: C-Net	News: Group
Apr 9	Tracking Customers, Personalization and Customization, One-to-One Marketing Blattberg, R. and J. Deighton, (1991), "Interactive Marketing: Exploiting the Age of Addressability", Sloan Management Review, Fall, pp. 5-1 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Chapter 7, 9
Apr 11	Case: Broadvision	News: Group
Apr 16	Business to Business Transactions (B2B) The Emerging Digital Economy - read Chapter 3 http://www.ecommerce.gov/emerging.htm New product development, Traffic management, Brand management Iansiti, M. and A. MacCormack, (1997), "Developing Products on Internet Time," Harvard Business Review, Sep-Oct, pp108-117 Book chapter 8	HW – 2
Apr 18	Case: Freemarkets Online	News: Group
Apr 23	Pricing strategies Shapiro, Carl and Hal Varian (1998),"Versioning: The Smart Way to Sell Information," Harvard Business Review, Nov-Dec, pp106-114 Varian, Hal "Market Structure in the Network Age" http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/doc/doc.html Auctions Book chapter 11
Apr 25	Case: CVS : The Web Strategy	News: Group
Apr 30	Advertising and Promotions, Permission Marketing Novak T.P. and D.L. Hoffman (1996)," New Metrics for the New Media: http://www2000.ogsm.vanderbilt.edu/novak/web.standards/webstand.html E-tailing, retailing, and mixed forms Affiliate Marketing Chapters 9, 12
May 2	Case: Yesmail.com	News: Group
May 7	FINAL EXAM