Chapter 4,5 and 6 Information Technology

 

CHAPTER 4

 

Ethical and social issues in information systems refers to the principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behaviors while the information ethics is a branch of ethics that focuses on the relationship between the creation, organization, dissemination, and use of information, and the ethical standards and moral codes governing human conduct in society, Information systems raise new ethical questions for both individuals and societies because they create opportunities for intense social change and thus threaten existing distribution of power, money, rights and obligations for example other technologies, such as steam engines, electricity, the telephone and the radio, information technology can be used to achieve social progress, but it can also be used to commit crimes and threaten cherished social values in that case the development of information technology will produce benefits for many and costs for others.

 

The Ethical issues in information systems have been given new urgency by the rise of the internet and electronic commerce, the Internet and digital firm technologies has made it easier than ever to assemble, integrate, and distribute information, unleashing new concerns about the appropriate use of customer information, the protection of personal confidentiality and the protection of intellectual property and other pressing ethical issues raised by information systems including establishing accountability for the consequences of information systems, setting standards to safeguard system quality that protects the safety of individual and society and preserving values and institutions considered essential to the quality of life in an information society.

 

My personal point of view

 

 It is very important to find out how ethics has been very beneficial in today’s daily activities in decisions applied and solutions to situations involving information provision and which reflect to an organization’s commitment to responsible information services involving information formats and needs require continual reconsideration of ethical principles and how these codes are applied. Considerations regarding information ethics influence personal decisions, professional practice and public policy.

 

As a matter of fact, changes in technology often affect the society for example it change individuals, jobs, education, government and social interactions which make up a society, each group has rights and responsibilities to one another, such as right to privacy and obligations regarding ethics.

 

The effect of technology on individuals can be beneficial or harmful but in most cases the modification in technology may help a group of individuals and be destructive to another set of people the usual challenges include loss of privacy, depersonalization and change in incentives, the benefits include lower prices, better products and services.

 

 Many of these issues does not only affect our society as a whole, but also raise lots of questions for organizations and our working place at large, therefore ethical analysis must provide a framework to take into consideration many diverse domains regarding how information is distributed and whoever violates the law be it a manager or junior employee will be convicted and will most likely spend time in prison for committing the kind of offence.

 

www.academia.edu/.../Ethics_and_Social_Impact_of_Information_Syste..

galletta.business.pitt.edu/amcis2003/05ITMGT8_SocialIssues.htm

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_ethics

 

CHAPTER 5

 

IT Information and Emerging Technologies

 

An IT infrastructure consists of a set of physical devices of hardware, software, network resources and services required for the existence, operation and management of an enterprise comprising of both human and technical capabilities in IT environment.

 It allows an organization to deliver IT solutions and services to its employees, partners and customers and is usually internal to an organization and deployed within owned facilities.

 

The IT infrastructure in organizations today is an outgrowth of over 50 years of evolution in computing platforms. There have been five stages in this evolution, each representing a different configuration of computing power and infrastructure elements.

 Five eras are generally purpose mainframe and minicomputer computing, personal computer, clients/server networks, enterprise computing and cloud and mobile computing.

 

Technologies that characterize one era may also be used in another time period for other purposes, some companies still run traditional mainframe systems or use mainframe computers as massive servers supporting large web sites and corporate enterprise applications.

 

The contemporary hardware Platform Trends, while the cost of computing has fallen, IT infrastructure expenditures have grown due to the rising cost of computing services, software, and the increase in intensity and sophistication of computing, the telecommunications and computing platforms have converged at the client level, with the merging of PDAs and cell phones, and at the server and network level, with the rise of Internet telephony.

The grid computing utilizes the idle computational resources of separate, geographically remote computers to create a single virtual supercomputer. In this process, a server computer breaks data and applications into discrete chunks that are parceled out to the grid's machines in that case the  grid computing offers increased cost savings, computational speed and agility.

High usage of computer demand will refer to firms offloading high peak demand for computing power to remote, large scale data processing centers. This allows firms to reduce their investment in IT infrastructure by investing in only as much computing power as needed on average and paying for additional power on an as-needed basis. This arrangement offers firms much greater agility and flexibility in their infrastructure.

Autonomic computing is an industry-wide effort to develop systems that can configure, optimize, repair, and protect themselves against intruders and viruses, in an effort to free system administrators from routine system management, reduce costly system crashes. Today's virus software with automatic virus updates is one example of autonomic computing.

The edge in computing is a multi-tier, load-balancing scheme for Web-based applications in which parts of the Web site content and processing are performed by smaller, less expensive servers located near the computer.

 

 In an edge computing platform client requests are initially processed by the edge servers, which may deliver static presentation content, reusable code, while database and business logic components are delivered by the enterprise servers

 

Personal point of view

 

I have learnt that Information technology benefits the business world by allowing organizations to work more efficiently and to maximize productivity putting in place Faster communication, electronic storage and the protection of records are the greatest advantages that IT can have on your enterprise.

 

Information technology creates electronic storage systems to protect your company's valuable records and secure maintenance of customer and patient files, it is also vital to business integrity Storage systems such as virtual vaults which keeps information safe by only allowing certain users within your company to access, withdraw, add or change the documents In business i discovered that what actually people look for is ways to do more work in a shorter period of time an also found out that Information technology has to do with computer applications on which nearly every work environment is dependent and since computerized systems are so widely used, it is advantageous to incorporate information technology into your organization to acquire all these benefits and enhancing your business or firm to grow by excessive usage of technology.

smallbusiness.chron.com › ... › InformationTechnology

 

CHAPTER 6

 

Foundations of Business Intelligence, Databases and Information Management

 

Are effective information systems that provide users with accurate, timely and relevant information and is free of errors. Information is timely when it is available decision makers when it is needed. Information is relevant when it is useful and appropriate for the types of work and decisions that require it.

 

Business doesn’t have timely accurate or relevant information because the data in their information systems have been poorly organized and maintained. That’s why data management is so essential to understand the problem they look at, how information systems arrange data in the computer files and traditional methods of file management.

Therefore a computer system organizes data in a hierarchy that starts with bits and bytes and progresses to fields, records, files, and databases. Abit represents the smallest unit of data a computer can handle.

 

A group of bits, is called a byte, represents a single character which can be a letter, a number or another symbol. Grouping of characters into a word, a group of words or a complete number is called field. A group of related fields such as the students name, the course taken, the date and the grade, comprises a record, a group of records of the same type is called a file, in other words a group of related files makes up a database.

An entity is a person, place, thing, or event on which we store and maintain information. Each characteristic or quality describing a particular entity is called an attribute, for example a student’s ID course, date and grade are attributes of the entity course. The specific values that these attributes can have are found in the fields of the record describing the entity course.

 

Business institutions use their databases to keep basic transactions such as paying suppliers, processing orders, keeping track of customers and paying employees but they also need databases to provide information that will help the company run the business more efficiently and help managers and employees make better decisions and if a company wants to know which product is the most popular or who is its most profitable customer.

 

 Personal point of view

 

I come to conclude that an effective information system provides users with accurate, timely, and relevant information, the accurate information is a free of error and Information is timely when it is available to decision makers when it is needed in an organization, computer systems organizes data in a hierarchy that starts with bits and bytes and progresses to fields, records, file and database.

 In most organizations, systems tended to grow independently without a company-wide plan like in accounting, finance, manufacturing, human resources, and sales and marketing all developed their own systems and data files.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 15: Communication

The Importance of Marketing Communication

Marketing communications is how you get your messages out to your stakeholders; this includes all internal and external audiences. The foundation of marketing communications is built on an understanding of what your different stakeholders want to know; for example you might communicate the benefits of a product to your customers and the sales figures to your shareholders.

Business communication takes many forms. Companies communicate internal information between managers or employees, while external communication is used to inform consumers about the company’s products. Marketing is an important function for a new small business. Entrepreneurs and business owners must inform consumers about the goods or services they are offering. Businesses develop marketing strategies to deliver specific messages to consumers in the economic marketplace.

Function

Businesses often follow a few basic steps when creating marketing communication. These steps include creating a message, selecting a communication channel, sending the message and responding to feedback. Marketing strategies can also include an analysis of the economic marketplace to determine the strength of consumer demand and the supply of products by competing companies. This analysis helps businesses understand how to differentiate their communication or marketing messages from other advertisements.

Types of Channels

Business communication in marketing is usually delivered using a specific communication channel. Marketing communication channels include television commercials, radio advertisements, print media ads and other traditional marketing channels. Information technology has increased the number of marketing channels. These channels include websites, email, chatting, texting and social media networks. Information technology marketing channels increase the target markets or demographic groups companies can reach with business communication messages.

Communication Process Models

Marketers should understand the fundamental elements of effective communications. Two models are useful: a macro-model and a micro-model.

Micro-models of marketing communications concentrate on consumer’s specific responses to communications. These models assume the buyer passes through cognitive, affective and behavioral stages, in that order. This learn-feel-do sequence is appropriate when the audience has high involvement with a product category to have high differentiation, such as an automobile. An alternative sequence, “do-feel-learn,” is relevant when the audience has high involvement but perceives little or no differentiation within the product category, such as an airline ticket. A third sequence, “learn-do-feel, is relevant when the audience has involvement and perceives little differentiation, such as salt .By choosing the right sequence, the marketer can do a better job of planning communications.

Strategy

Marketing communication strategies are divided in two basic groups: direct and indirect. Businesses use a direct communication style by comparing their products to a leading competitor or the industry standard. This style allows businesses to promote the benefits of their products and why consumers will receive satisfaction when purchasing them. Indirect communication styles present a product’s feature and allow consumers to make up their own mind about the benefits of the product. An indirect communication method may be perceived by consumers as less adversarial than the direct method.

Considerations

Businesses should carefully consider the receiving audience of business communication and marketing. Using a blanket communication channel or communication style may create cultural or societal confusion. Demographic groups usually respond to marketing communications in different ways. The reception of marketing messages is often filtered by the demographic group’s age, race, cultural beliefs or other factors. Tailoring business communication in marketing can help companies avoid these negative situations.

Hiring an Agency

Using a professional marketing agency can help companies develop effective business communication in marketing. These agencies usually have copious amounts of resources regarding economic markets, consumer demand and behavior and other information pertinent to creating marketing strategies. Small business owners may also develop a professional relationship with independent marketing representatives who can provide key insight on business communication and marketing strategies using several different communication channels.

Measuring Communication Results

After implementing the communications plan, the company must measure its impact by asking members of the target audiences whether they recognize or recall the message, how many times they saw it, what points they recall, how they felt about the message, and what are their previous and current attitudes toward the product and company. The communicator should also collect behavioral measures of audience response, such as how many people bought the product, liked it and talked to others about it. Suppose 80 percent of the targeted customers are aware of the brand, 60 percent have tried it , and 20 percent who tried  it are satisfied.  This indicates that the communications program    is effective in creating awareness, but the product fails to meet consumer expectations.

However if 40 percent of the targeted customers are aware of the brand and only 30ware of the brand and only 30 percent have tried it, but 80 percent of them are satisfied, the communications program needs to be strengthened to take advantage of the brand’s power.

My Point of View

Communicating effectively yields results in any business and of course without it businesses will fail. Understanding stakeholder’s needs and key messages comes from having an integrated marketing plan; The best chance of successfully getting audiences is to take the desired action e.g. getting the customer to make a purchase, and consider the DRIP analogy. DRIP stands for differentiate, remind, inform and persuade and should be a blend of messages delivered through a number of channels, over a period of time; this helps keep the key messages memorable.

Chapter 11: Designing and Managing Services

A service is any act or performance that one party can offer to another that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything. It may or may not be tied to a physical product. The service component can be a major or minor part of the total offering. Services are intangible inseparable, variable, and perishable, and each characteristic poses marketing challenges. Marketers must find ways to give tangibility to intangibles, to increase the productivity of service providers, to increase and standardize the quality of the service provided and to match the supply of services with demand.

Marketers of services face new realities in the 21^st century due to customer empowerment, customer co-production and the need to satisfy employees as well as customers. Marketers can differentiate their services offerings through primary and secondary services features as well as continual innovations. Superior service delivery requires managing customer expectations and incorporating self-service technologies. To offer the best support, a manufacturer must identify the services customers value most and their relative importance. It should also plan for delivering service after the purchase.

Managing service quality

According to one study, the factors that cause customers to switch services fall into eight categories: pricing, inconvenience, core service failure, service encounter failures, response to service failure, competition, ethical problems, and involuntary switching. Two important considerations in delivering service quality are managing customer expectations and incorporation self-service technologies.

Chapter 8: Creating Brand Equity

Defining Brand Equity

It is the added value endowed on products and services. It reflects in the way consumers think, feel and act with respect to the brand, as well as in the prices, market share, and profitability the brand commands. There are various perspectives toward brand equity; customer-based brand equity; is the differential effect brand knowledge has on consumer response to that brand’s marketing. 

A brand has positive customer-based brand equity when customers react more favorably to a product and its marketing when the brand is identified, than when it is not identified. A brand has negative customer – based brand equity if consumers react less favorably to its marketing activity under the same circumstances.

There are three key ingredients of customer-based brand equity.

First, brand equity arises from differences in consumer response. If no difference s occur, the brand-name product is essential a commodity, and competition will probably be based on price.

Second differences in response are a result of a consumer’s brand knowledge, all the thoughts, feelings, images, experiences and beliefs associated with the brand. Brands must create strong, favorable, and unique brand associations with customers.

Third, brand equity is reflected in perceptions, preferences, and behavior related to all aspects of the brand’s marketing. Stronger brands lead to greater loyalty and revenue, larger profit margins, less vulnerability to competition and increased marketing communications effectiveness.

Marketing assignment

Chapter 4

Creating long term loyalty relationship is the foundation of marketing is a strong customer relationships, marketers must win customers by connecting with them, listening and responding to them. The cornerstone of holistic marketing is strong customer relationship, marketers must win customers by connecting with them through listening and responding to them, informing, engaging them and energizing them in process.

Building customer value, satisfaction and loyalty consumers are better educated and informed than ever, they have tools to verify companies’ claims and seek out superior alternatives.

Customer-perceived value is the difference between the prospective customers evaluation of all the benefits and all the costs of an offering and the perceived alternatives.

Personal point view

I work with a road construction company, my example of creating long term relationship, the President announced that the Cabinet meeting will be held at the Army training Camp, we worked on that road with immediately without a contract to maintain our client the Government and acquired 70%of the market.

Chapter 5

Analyzing Consumer market is the primary importance to understand the psyche of the customers and their   buying motives. Therefore Marketers must fully understand both the theory and reality of consumer’s behavior because a consumer’s buying behavior is influenced by cultural factors is fundamental determinant of a persons wants and behavior, social factors in addition to cultural factors, and personal factors a consumers behavior  is influenced by such social factors as reference groups, family and social roles and statuses. A persons reference groups consists of all the groups that have a direct or indirect influence on his/her attitudes or behavior.
Age and stage in the life cycle People buy different goods and services over a lifetime.
Taste in food, clothes, furniture, and recreation is often age related.

Occupation and economic circumstances also influences consumption patterns, for example a blue-collar worker will buy work clothes, work shoes and lunchboxes but a company president will buy dress suits, air travel and country club membership.

Personality and self concept by personality, we mean a set of distinguishing human psychological traits that lead to relatively consistent and enduring responses to environmental personality and self concept by personality and self concept by personality, we mean a set of distinguishing human psychological traits that lead to relatively consistent and enduring responses to environmental.

Personal point of view

 I went with my sister to a shopping mall she liked a pair of shoes for  that it could look good on me  and she is peer company I ended up being influenced by and bought the shoes this is a social culture factor that influenced me .

Chapter 6

Analyzing Business Markets to find out what information you need to know about potential customers for your business. The business market consists of all the organizations that acquire goods and services used in the production of other products or services that are sold, rented or supplied to others. The major industries making up the business market are agriculture, forestry and fisheries, mining, manufacturing, construction, transportation, communication, public utilities, banking, finance and insurance, distribution and services. Business marketers face many of the same challenges as consumer marketers, in particular understanding their customers and what they value is of paramount important to both.

Personal experience

I had food supplements for forever living and I analyzed my market and I found it was best needed by aged people because they are the ones that have loose of appetite and consume these products and actually I got a lot of clients in this class of people.

Chapter 7

Identifying market segments and targets is the aggregating of prospect buyers into groups that have common needs and will respond similarly to a marketing action using different marketing mixes to help gain competitive advantage with a specific segment, selling two or more products with different features targeted to different market segment, segmentation in linking needs to actions and is grouped into two people or organizations according to similarity of needs and the benefits desired and must be related to specific tangible marketing actions.

Brainstorm a list of potential market segments for your product or service. Use your research about the competition to help determine which segments have unmet needs or problems relevant to your product or service. Write your answers below.

Identify key characteristics of each market segment related to your product or service. list the market segments you then identify  in the left-hand column, across the top, list the major features or benefits of your product or service, Then check each feature or benefit that is most valuable to each market segment to determine which segment is your most likely target market

Personal experience

There is an umbrella company called Crystal ventures limed that used market segmentation to the fullest of it, it is into road construction, estate construction, production of construction products, tiles factory, food processing industry and a coffee shop and it is very successful.

Lilian

Marketing assignment week two

Chapter 4

Creating long term loyalty relationship is the foundation of marketing and  strong customer relationships, marketers must win customers by connecting with them, listening and responding to them.

Personal point view

I work with a road construction company, my example of creating long term relationship, the President announced that the Cabinet meeting will be held at the Army training Camp, we worked on that road with immediately without a contract to maintain our client the Government and acquired 70%of the market.

Chapter 5

Analyzing Consumer market is the primary importance to understand the psyche of the customers and their   buying motives. Therefore Marketers must fully understand both the theory and reality of consumer’s behavior because a consumer’s buying behavior is influenced by cultural, social, and personal factors.

Personal point of view

 I went with my sister to a shopping mall she liked a pair of shoes for  that it could look good on me  and she is peer company I ended up being influenced by and bought the shoes this is a social culture factor that influenced me .

Chapter 6

Analyzing Business Markets to find out what information you need to know about potential customers for your business.

Personal experience

I had food supplements for forever living and I analyzed my market and I found it was best needed by aged people because they are the ones that have loose of appetite and consume these products and actually I got a lot of clients in this class of people.

Chapter 7

Identifying market segments and targets is the aggregating of prospect buyers into groups that have common needs and will respond similarly to a marketing action.

Personal experience

There is an umbrella company called Crystal ventures limed that used market segmentation to the fullest of it, it is into road construction, estate construction, production of construction products, tiles factory, food processing industry and a coffee shop and it is very successful.

Lilian