Merchandise and Treating People

Merchandise and Treating People

Merchandise and Treating People

That understanding must be constantly refreshed using the most current articles and information from experts. This text provides readers with an appreciation of the need to ask questions, a framework from which to derive the ques- tions to ask, and a foundation sufficient to understand the answers received. The remaining chapters build on the foundation provided in the Information Systems Strategy Triangle.

Brief Overview of Business Strategy Frameworks A strategy is a coordinated set of actions to fulfill objectives, purposes, and goals. The essence of a strategy is setting limits on what the business will seek to accomplish. Strategy starts with a mission. A mission is a clear and compelling statement that unifies an organization’s effort and describes what the firm is all about (i.e., its purpose). Mark Zuckerberg’s reflection on the mission of Facebook provides an interesting example. Originally conceived as a product rather than a service, the CEO of Facebook commented, “after we started hiring more people and building out the team, I began to get an appreciation that a company is a great way to get a lot of people involved in a mission you’re trying to push forward. Our mission is getting people to connect.”4

In a few words, the mission statement sums up what is unique about the firm. The information in Figure 1.2 indi- cates that even though Zappos, Amazon, and L.L. Bean are all in the retail industry, they view their missions quite differently. For example, Zappos’ focus is on customer service, Amazon is about customer sets, and L.L. Bean is

3 F. Hogue, V. Sambamurthy, R. Zmud, T. Trainer, and C. Wilson, Winning the 3‐Legged Race (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2005). 4 Shayndi Raice, “Is Facebook Ready for the Big Time?” The Wall Street Journal (January 14–15, 2012), B1.

c01.indd 19 11/26/2015 6:19:39 PM
20 The Information Systems Strategy Triangle

about the merchandise and treating people the right way. It’s interesting to note that although Amazon purchased Zappos in 2009, the acquisition agreement specified that Zappos would continue to run independently of its new parent. Today, Zappos continues to remain both culturally and physically separate from Amazon. Zappos is located near Las Vegas, Nevada, and Amazon is in Seattle, Washington.

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.