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Preface 21

and transform the day-to-day conduct of business. In the process, some old
businesses, even industries, are being destroyed while new businesses are
springing up.
For instance, the rapid growth of online content stores such as iTunes and
Amazon, based on cloud storage services—driven by millions of consumers
who prefer smartphones and tablet computers as the center of their media
world—has forever changed the older business models of distributing music,
television, and movies on physical discs, such as CDs and DVDs. Cloud-based
content delivered on the Internet is beginning to challenge the dominance of
cable television networks for the delivery of television shows.
E-commerce is growing rapidly again following a deep recession, generating
over $362 billion in revenues in 2012, and is estimated to grow to over $542 bil-
lion in 2016. With nearly 122 million Americans accessing the Internet with
their smartphones, mobile commerce in 2012 has grown to $30 billion in a few
years, and is growing by double digits each year. Amazon's revenues grew 41
percent in 2011, despite the recession, while offline retail grew by 5 percent.
E-commerce is changing how firms design, produce and deliver their products
and services. E-commerce has reinvented itself again, disrupting the tradi-
tional marketing and advertising industry and putting major media and content
firms in jeopardy. Facebook and other social networking sites such as YouTube,
Twitter, and Tumblr, and new graphical social sites such as Pinterest, exemplify
the new face of e-commerce in the 21st Century. They sell services. When
we think of e-commerce we tend to think of an online store selling physical
products. While this iconic vision of e-commerce is still very powerful and the
fastest growing form of retail sales in the U.S., growing up alongside is a whole
new value stream based on selling services, not goods. It’s a services model of
e-commerce. Information systems and technologies are the foundation of this
new services-based e-commerce.
Likewise, the management of business firms has changed: With new mobile
smartphones, high-speed wireless Wi-Fi networks, and wireless laptop and
tablet computers, remote salespeople on the road are only seconds away from
their managers’ questions and oversight. Managers on the move are in direct,
continuous contact with their employees. The growth of enterprise-wide infor-
mation systems with extraordinarily rich data means that managers no longer
operate in a fog of confusion, but instead have online, nearly instant, access to
the really important information they need for accurate and timely decisions.
In addition to their public uses on the Web, private social networks, wikis and
blogs are becoming important corporate tools for communication, collabora-
tion, and information sharing.

THE 13TH EDITION: THE COMPREHENSIVE SOLUTION

FOR THE MIS CURRICULUM

Since its inception, this text has helped to define the MIS course around the
globe. This edition continues to be authoritative, but is also more customizable,
flexible, and geared to meeting the needs of different colleges, universities, and
individual instructors. This book is now part of a complete learning package
that includes the core text and an extensive offering of supplemental materials
on the Web.
The core text consists of 15 chapters with hands-on projects covering essen-
tial topics in MIS. An important part of the core text is the Video Case Study

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