Classroom Companion: Business

 
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Questions
1. Amazon and Alibaba are two of the largest e-commerce companies in the 
world.
(a) Are Amazon and Alibaba doing B2B, B2C, C2B, or C2C e-commerce?
(b) How are Amazon and Alibaba handling online payments?
(c) Have Amazon’s and Alibaba’s business operations influenced transaction 
costs?
2. Apple Pay is an online payment service.
(a) Is Apple Pay an experience good or a search good?
(b) Is Apple Pay an OTT service?
3. Why can we categorize the users of eBay, Twitter, Airbnb, and Wikipedia as 
prosumers?
 
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Answers
1. Amazon and Alibaba
(a) Amazon is primarily a B2C and Alibaba is primarily a C2C. However, 
Amazon has also enabled C2C on its platforms.
(b) Alibaba has its own payment system called Alipay. Amazon relies on exter-
nal payment systems.
(c) Both Amazon and Alibaba have contributed to reduced transaction costs 
in the digital economy. This is because they allow consumers to search for 
millions of products on their websites in a very efficient way compared to 
traditional retail businesses, e.g., by using keywords.
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2. Apple Pay
(a) Apple Pay is a search good: the attributes of the service are known before 
it is used.
(b) Apple Pay is not an OTT service but offered in combination with other 
Internet services (e.g., e-commerce).
3. eBay offers a platform on which users may sell goods directly to other users. 
Users post messages on Twitter that is read and commented by other users. 
Airbnb mediates between users having assets for short-term rental (e.g., vaca-
tion homes) and other users in search for such assets. The users of Wikipedia 
are both producers and readers of the information on the encyclopedia. In all 
cases, the user may be both producer and consumer.
References
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Lang, B., Dolan, R., Kemper, J., & Northey, G. (2020). Prosumers in time of crisis: Definition, arche-
types and implications. Journal of Service Management, 32(2), 176–189.
Linde, F., & Stock, W. G. (2011). Information markets. A strategic guideline for the I-commerce. De 
Gruyter Saur.
Long, D. (2017, July 5). China’s ecommerce market to pass $1.1tn in 2017. The Drum.
Nelson, P. (1970). Information and consumer behavior. Journal of Political Economy, 78(2), 311.
Pine, B. J., & Gilmore, J. (1998, July 1). Welcome to the experience economy. Harvard Business Review.
Popovic, A. (2019, August 21). mCommerce: How mobile commerce is changing the way we do business. 
Price2Spy.
Rhodes. (2017, September 22). UBER: Which countries have banned the controversial taxi app. The 
Independent.
The impact of Covid-19 on ecommerce. Ecommerce News Europe. January 15, 2021.