Note: See Printer-Friendly Syllabus here: 2015 E-Commerce Strategies Syllabus_v2.pdf

Electronic Commerce Strategies

MGMT S-5010 (Course #32577)
Harvard Summer School– Summer 2015
Syllabus

Location: B108 Northwest (Science) Building

Instructor	Teaching Fellow
Professor Dennis Galletta University of Pittsburgh Email: galletta@katz.pitt.edu Skype: PittDoctorG	Jeremy Doran Email: jeremy.doran@post.harvard.edu

Course Background

When I created a predecessor of this course back in 1995 (as perhaps the second or third one available world-wide), there was tremendous “magic” in the air. People dreamt about millions of dollars that could be cashed in on wild ideas. And some indeed earned those millions. Some earned millions on selling a shaky idea only to see the buyer turn around and make tens of millions on the same idea. And sometimes the buyers were left with nothing. There sure was plenty of excitement; the course had standing-room only crowds, waiting lists, and disappointed students who could not get in due to a lack of chairs.

The landscape in e-commerce has changed since then. In 2000, we saw the “dot com bubble” burst with dramatic loss of wealth in nearly the entire technology sector. It took until this Spring for NASDAQ to recover from its high of 5,132 in March of 2000, 15 years ago. We also have seen mobile technology like tablets and smartphones overtaking laptops in sales and “eye-share.” Social networking and cloud computing have become mainstream rather than fringe, creative ideas, pushing word processing and email to the back seat. Venture capital has also increased, not only matching but also surpassing previous levels. It would be an understatement to say that E-Commerce has been re-invigorated once again; it would be fair to say that it is even more central and exciting than ever before.

Another change was the focus of the commerce activity itself. Back in 1996, the course focused on existing firms that experimented with websites. Then Amazon, Yahoo, and EBay grew successfully, showing us the power of a new concept: a “pure play” firm that had no physical store or presence of any kind. Those firms then forced brick and mortar businesses to add a web presence to their capital and operating expenses, to invent another new concept: a “brick and click” business. Following that initiative, social components were integrated into many websites, moving towards “Web 2.0.” Shortly after that, mobile phones and tablets suddenly became central. Now some visionary firms have integrated social networks and mobile computing into business as usual. A striking fact is that each of these changes took only a few years to become mainstream.

The Focus of the Course

Over the same period, there has been dramatic maturing of the content of E-Commerce courses as well. Back in 1995, those three or four of us designing the first E-Commerce courses spent several weeks teaching students about HTML, JavaScript, and other low-level tools for building web-pages. Just 20 years later and counting, the list of technologies is longer than ever and changing constantly, but powerful packages are now available that avoid the need for developers to see the HTML language very often (if at all). One popular and powerful example is Adobe’s Dreamweaver. There is also a trend towards using sites such as WordPress, which employ simplified but still-powerful templates and features. Even Word (since XP) allows you to develop web pages and save them as HTML documents. There are fewer barriers than ever before to publish any of your materials to the world.

The trouble is that many tools require expert knowledge of how to change server operating system settings (especially to open security gates to only the right parties), create forms, and to link to databases. The technology has developed so much that an entire series of courses can, and must, be taken to build a sophisticated and unusual on-line business. Meanwhile, the philosophy in this course is that it is more important to have the creative idea, the gem, the golden moment that can support the investment of a lifetime’s worth of income, rather than to focus on the mechanics. In other words, a great site will wither and die if it has no strategic business value. The issues of competitive advantage and sustainability of that advantage are more important than the mechanics.

It is no accident that the word “strategies” is in the course title. We will focus on competitive advantage and sustainability in this course rather than the operational mechanics. While we will discuss some of the technologies that can be used in e-commerce, our focus will be technology agnostic.

The development of new businesses has admittedly slowed. Most of the effort is now aimed at helping an existing business looking at new ways to leverage e-commerce, rather than starting new enterprises. Of course, some new e-commerce businesses are created, but new businesses are also created in the physical brick and mortar world, even in mature enterprises like stores, restaurants, and service firms.

All in all, there is both good and bad news. The good news is that much good, interesting, and intellectual content is now available for studying e-commerce. There are interesting strategic models and a plethora of cases involving those in your day-to-day experience like music downloading and those that you probably will never use, such as Baxter’s Business-to-Business system.

The bad news is that the area is still developing so some of your knowledge will seem time-sensitive. You will find that new developments will seem to make some of this material obsolete. Fortunately, the approach we take here will focus on frameworks that will not change as rapidly as the technology. If you become accustomed to applying the strategic frameworks to these real situations, you will see how new technologies do not change everything all at once. There are still timeless issues of competitive forces, competitive advantage, value chain, and sustainability that will organize the material, and hopefully will organize your thoughts about the new technologies for many years to come.

Course Approach

My approach in this course is to combine my own extensive teaching and research materials with that of the best and most up-to-date textbook in the area, and sprinkle in a range of case studies. The result is perhaps a heavy reading load, but our six-week format allows you to become immersed in the material. The text will also serve to supplement the class materials, perhaps providing deeper explanations of any items that I might gloss over. For cases, I will provide specific questions (in the last section of this syllabus) to avoid you having to guess what I am looking for, and I will alternate as best I can your case requirements between group cases and individual cases.

Materials

Text: Laudon, Kenneth C. and Carol Guercio Traver, E-Commerce: Business, Technology, Society 2014 (11^th ed). New Jersey: Pearson Education (Prentice-Hall), ISBN-10: 0133507165; ISBN-13: 978-0133507164

Cases: See fuller description below, but they are available for purchase at https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/access/37039309

Note: If you need only The NY Times Paywall case, here is the link: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/access/37795559

Other: In addition, the following readings are required, with numbers mapping to the tentative course schedule:

1. Galletta, Dennis “Thinking Strategically about E-Commerce to Achieve Competitive Advantage,” Keynote presentation for the 17^th Conference on EDI and E-Commerce, Rachna, Poland, June 2009. Available at http://www.pitt.edu/~galletta/research/GallettaKeynote.pdf
2. Cummings, Joanne, “How SOA could change the way you buy electricity,” Network World, October 22, 2007. Available at http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/197196/how_soa_could_change_way_buy_electricity/
3. Kay, Russell, “Quickstudy: Cloud Computing,” Computerworld, August 4, 2008. Available at http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/255703/quickstudy_cloud_computing/
4. Elberse, Anita, “Should you Invest in the Long Tail?” Harvard Business Review, July-Aug 2008. (See Canvas site for retrieval information)
5. Bonabue, Eric, “Decisions 2.0: The Power of Collective Intelligence,” Sloan Management Review, 50, no. 2, pp. 45-52. (See Canvas site for retrieval information)
6. Loiacono, Eleanor, “Web Accessibility and Corporate America,” Communications of the ACM, 47, no. 12, pp. 83-87. (See Canvas site for retrieval information)

Student Responsibilities[1]

Classroom conduct: Please turn off cell phones and pagers (or set to “silent”). If you need to leave the classroom for any reason, please do so quietly to minimize disruption to the rest of the class. Also, please hold private conversations outside the classroom. If you know you will need to leave prior to the end of the scheduled time for the class session, please let me know before the class begins.

Your participation is important in the class. I will expect you to:

• Actively participate in classroom discussions, but not to dominate every conversation. I expect you to contribute regularly but also give others a significant chance as well.
• Ask questions to clarify material that is not understood
• Initiate meaningful discussions to extend analysis on topics of interest that are related to class material
• Please do not initiate loosely-related discussions just to be marked as “participating.” Other students would like to stick to the topics in the course as closely as possible.
• Work in groups for several cases and projects. Obtain maximum value from this crucial aspect of this course.
• Come to class; In accordance with Harvard rules, you are expected to attend all classes, missing only rarely. There usually are students on a waiting list for the summer program courses, and we give preference to those who will engage in the courses fully. This course has enjoyed roughly 99% attendance over the past four years; don’t be the 1% who misses significant material.
• If you cannot come to any single class, please obtain the notes from another student – private tutoring will not be available to those who miss class. It is important to note that any announcements in any class session are official and apply to all students registered, not just those who attend that day.
• After class, if you still don’t understand a concept, please feel free to email and set up a meeting time. I’m happy to provide extra help when needed. Historically, the concepts have not been very difficult in this course but the workload is high.

[1] Thanks to my colleague Andy Schwarz for a previous version of this section as well as the next “How to be Successful…”

How to be Successful in this Course

I want you to be successful, not only in this course, but also in your future career. All of the material and assignments have been designed so that you are prepared for real life! To be successful in this course and your future career, consider a few suggestions:

1. You now have the syllabus for the course that includes all of the important dates. Keep track of the dates and plan your schedule around your work load.
2. Be ready when you to come to class – read the chapters and, print out the slides (if that is your practice), the day before class so that you are not rushed coming to class. Preparing while the semester is going along will make it easier around quiz time.
3. As stated above, the workload is high but the material is fairly straightforward. The skill we emphasize in this course is analysis, integration, and generalization of concepts in diverse contexts.
4. Ask questions. The only bad question is the one that you did not ask (and then missed on an exam or case).
5. Be professional. Think of your instructors in any courses as bosses whom you want to impress – be professional with them and they will return the favor. Also, keep up your end of the workload in your groups.
6. View this class within the right context. As in your career, don’t look for shortcuts – failing to learn course material will hurt you when you are looking for a job. Start planning for your success now by treating this course as you would a job.

Class Format

The usual class plan is to cover a case for about an hour to 90 minutes, then to cover detailed chapter material. The case preparation will cover at a basic level the material that should be read for the class in which the case is due. We will cover more advanced concepts in the “lecture” portion of the class.

Administrative Matters

Harvard has a well-defined process for many administrative matters. There are specific procedures for students with disabilities (please contact Academic Services at 617-495-0977 or disabilities@dcemail.harvard.edu), religious conflicts, and makeups (we can’t do it). Also, taking attendance is required of me, especially during the early classes to allow waitlisted students to take the place of non-attending registered students. Given that you are taking the course for graduate credit and have obviously survived an undergraduate program, suffice it to say that your submitted work must be yours and yours alone unless the assignment is clearly labeled to be from your group. As you most likely know by now, there are severe penalties for academic dishonesty, which includes copying nearly any amount of text from a web site without quotation marks or attribution and any amount of copying from others. If you cite a source, simply use quotation marks around the section you are quoting and then insert an author name and year in parentheses, as well as a list of complete references. If you do this, as the only modestly funny joke goes, “cheating” becomes “research.” Because you are all held closely to it, you should be familiar with the academic integrity policy explained in http://www.summer.harvard.edu/exams-grades-policies/student-responsibilities.

Writing up cases: Generally in analyzing cases we do not expect your writing to be dramatic or artistic. So you can dispense with the “It was a dark and stormy night” beginning or clever plot development, or integrating all concerns to flow in a story format. The bullets or sentences you hand in should be clear and tied to the questions you are asked. Please label the answers to follow the questions: 1, 2, 3a, 3b, etc. Regarding clarity, if writing is an issue for you, or you just want some help, the writing center is ready to help during the summer term. See http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k33202.

Cases [Individual and Group]

The non-text cases are available on Harvard Publishing’s site but it will save you substantially to order them from the Harvard site through this course. The link to buy them at a discount (less than $20 total) is https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/access/37039309

I use many rather new cases, but some classic ones have valuable lessons as well, and are a little older. Harvard cases are about management approaches, not about the latest trends or developments. Any older cases that you see in this course have been chosen carefully to cover particular issues that they cover extremely well.

In the order in which they are covered, the cases are as follows. Please refer to the questions to answer for each case analysis that are provided later in this syllabus; do not answer any questions you see in the cases themselves.

• Pinterest: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, 2015, (Chap 1, pp. 3-6 in the text)
• Lands’ End, 2003 (available at the following link: (please inform me if it disappears) http://www.business.unr.edu/faculty/kuechler/750/landsEnd.pdf.
• iPremier Co. (A) Denial of Service Attack: Graphic Novel version (Austin, Leibrock, & Murray) 6/25/09: #9609092 (Buy from the Harvard link above)
• Orbitz Charts its Mobile Trajectory, 2015, (Chap 4, pp. 240-243 in the text)
• Facebook vs Twitter: Does Social Marketing Work? 2015, (Chaps 2 and 7; pp. 55-58 and 417-419 in the text)
• com: Exploiting the Value of Digital Business Infrastructure (Applegate & Collura), 9/5/2000: #9-800-330 (Buy from the Harvard link above)
• The New York Times Paywall, (Kumar, Anand, Gupta, Gee) 1/31/2013: #9-512-077 (Buy from the Harvard link above)
• eBay Evolves, 2015, (Chap 11, pp. 736-738 in the text)
• Uber Revs Up, 2015, (Chap 9, pp. 615-617 in the text)
• Threadless: The Business of Community (Lakhani & Kanji), 6/30/08: #608707 (Buy from the Harvard link above)—it is available on CDROM or Web link – if you choose CDROM it must be mailed physically.

I strive to make this course as “paperless” as possible. Of course, having a textbook violates that policy right away. However, if you rent the online version or recycle or resell your text at the end, it will get closer to that goal. Further, the cases and readings outside of the text can all be downloaded and, hopefully, comfortably read from your screen. We strive to never hand out any paper (except for quizzes). Given that there are limitations in the Harvard case downloads (only readable on your current computer or for a limited time), you might want to print them if you wish to keep them forever.

Final Course Outline

Part 1: Introduction
1	June 23	Introduction Group Formation Strategic Models	Chap 1 Galletta (2009)1
2	June 25	e-Commerce Business Models and Concepts e-Commerce Infrastructure Creative Applications Group adjustments/reformation	Chaps 2, 3 Cummings2 and Kay3 articles
Part 2: Technology Infrastructure for E-Business
3	June 30	Pinterest case analysis due (individual) (pp. 3-6) – see the last section of this syllabus for all case questions! E-Commerce Infrastructure Ethical Issues	Chap 3 (continued), Chap 8 (sec 1 only)
3	July 2	Lands End case analysis due (group) E-Commerce Security	Chap 5
4	July 7	iPremier case analysis due (individual) E-Commerce Security Quiz 1	Chap 5 (continued)
Part 3: Business Concepts and Social Issues
5	July 9	Orbitz case analysis due (group) (text Chap 4 p. 240) Building an E-Commerce Presence	Chap 5 (conclusion) Chap 4 pt. 1
6	July 14	Facebook vs Twitter case analysis due (brief class discussion only; nothing written) (text Chaps 2 pg 55; Chap 7 pg. 417) E-Commerce Marketing and Advertising Concepts Failures analysis due (group)	Chap 4 pt. 2 Chap 6 pg. 1
7	July 16	Amazon case analysis due (individual) E-Commerce Marketing and Advertising Concepts	Chap 6 pt. 2
Part 4: E-Commerce in Action
8	July 21	New York Times case analysis due (group) Guest Speaker: Eleanor Loiacono Social, Mobile, and Local Marketing The Long Tail Quiz 2	Loiacono4 Chap 7 Elberse5
9	July 23	Uber case analysis (individual) (text Chap 9 pg. 615) Ethical, Social, Political Issues Online Retailing and Services	Chaps 8, 9 pt. 1
10	July 28	Threadless case analysis due (group) Crowdsourcing Online Retailing and Services Online Content and media	Chap 9 pt. 2, Chap 10 Bonabeau6
11	July 30	eBay case analysis due (individual) (text Chap 11 pg 736) Social Networks, Auctions, and Portals B2B, Supply Chain, Collaborative Commerce	Chaps 11, 12
Final	Aug 4	Online Entrepreneurship Project Presentations (group) Quiz 3

 

Note: All case analyses are due online (Word or PDF format are preferred) by the minute class begins. For each 5 minutes or fraction thereof, 1 point is deducted until the score becomes zero (this occurs in less than a half hour).

Grading Scale

In general, given that cases and projects tend to have high scores, the grading scale will be a little more stringent than usual. If the grades are low, I will curve upwards to achieve a reasonable distribution. The “at worst” guidelines I follow are:

Points	Letter Grade
95-100	A
93-94	A-
91-92	B+
87-90	B
85-86	B-
83-84	C+
79-82	C
77-78	C-
75-76	D+
72-74	D
70-71	D-
Below 70	F

 

The University rules preclude students from handing in extra work or resubmissions to improve assigned grades. Grade changes are only permitted if there is a “clearly documented clerical or computational error” (see the summer program’s policies on grades at http://www.summer.harvard.edu/exams-grades-policies/grades). Further, while students may certainly ask for explanations about grades and to review graded papers, the grading policy goes on to state that “repeatedly calling your instructor about a grade or additional points or telling your instructor that you need a certain grade could be considered harassment.”

Grading and Points

Element	Points
Five individual cases (5 points each)	25
Four group cases (3 points each)	12
“Failures” Presentation	10
Three quizzes (8 points each)	24
Online Entrepreneurship Project	15
Class attendance and participation	9
Peer evaluations of quality and quantity of your work	5
Total	100