HC3152 E-Business Applications - Assessment Task Tutorial Questions

Question 2: (7 Marks)

Authors such as Michael Porter, identified five main competitive forces that may impact a company’s’ ability to grow and survive. While this framework is based around traditional brick-and-mortar stores, they can be related to the 21th century, e-business world. Answer the following 2-part question:

Part A: With the above background, identify 3 competitive threats applied to e-business on the buy-side (upstream supply chain), and also 2 competitive threats from the perspective of the sell-side (downstream supply chain). Provide a brief explanation, how and/or why, each competitive threat, could impact a business. [5 marks]

Part B: Briefly describe how a company like Amazon, is both a buy-side and sell-side enterprise, and how this could be interpreted as anti-competitive (2 Marks).