By 2018, the online travel agency industry had consolidated around two leaders: Expedia (which had acquired Travelocity, Lastminute, Hotels, Trivago, and Orbitz) and Priceline (which owned booking, Kayak, Rentalcars, and OpenTable). These two market leaders competed with numerous smaller online travel agents (e. g., TripAdvisor, Travelzoo, Skyscanner, Ctrip), with traditional travel agencies (e. g., Carlson Wagonlit, TUI, American Express—all of which had adopted a "bricks ‘n’ clicks" business model), and with direct online sales by airlines, hotel chains, and car rental companies. Amazon and Google were both potential entrants to the market. The online travel agents are dependent upon computerized airline reservation systems such as Sabre, Amadeus, and Travelport. Required:
Use Porter’s five forces framework to predict the likely profitability of the online travel agency industry over the next ten years.

The owners of backstreets italian restaurant are considering starting a delivery service forpizza and their other italian dishes in the small college town where they are located. theycan purchase a used delivery van and have it painted with their name and logo for $21,500.they can hire part-time drivers who will work in the evenings from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. for$8 per hour. the drivers are mostly college students who study at the restaurant when theyare not making deliveries. during the day, there are so few deliveries that the regular employeescan handle them. the owners estimate that the van will last 5 years (365 days per year)before it has to be replaced and that each delivery will cost about $1.35 in gas and othermaintenance costs (including tires, oil, scheduled service, they also estimate that onaverage each delivery order will cost $15 for direct labor and ingredients to prepare andpackage, and will generate $34 in revenue.a. how many delivery orders must backstreets make each month in order for the service to break even? b. the owners believe that if they have approximately the break-even number of deliveries during the week, they will at least double that number on fridays, saturdays, and sundays. if that’s the case, how much profit will they make, at a minimum, from their delivery service each month (4 weeks per month)?

Which of the following is not a characteristic of enterprise applications that cause challenges in implementation? a. they introduce "switching costs," making the firm dependent on the vendor. b. they cause integration difficulties as every vendor uses different data and processes. c. they are complex and time consuming to implement. d. they support "best practices" for each business process and function. e. they require sweeping changes to business processes to work with the software.

What impact might an economic downturn have on a borrower’s fixed-rate mortgage? a. it might cause a borrower’s payments to go up. b. it might cause a borrower’s payments to go down. c. it has no impact because a fixed-rate mortgage cannot change. d. it has no impact because the economy does not affect interest rates.