Online business

13 Complete this crossword puzzle.

1 2

l I I

- r-- r-- --s--

- '-- - -

6 7

I--- I I
8

I
'--- -
Across
1 Companies are taking advantage of viral marketing including blogging and
.. ........... .. ... ... networking in place of more conventional marketing. (6)

3 .... .... ....... .. .... is the skill of finding and following a path through Internet
websites. (10)

7 Many will remember 2000 as the year of the .... .... ..... .. ..... . crash. (6)

8 ...... ... .. ......... refers to the sets of programs that tell a computer how to do a particular
job. (8)

Down
1 There are signs that in the next few years, the Google ... ........ ... ....... monopoly may
become even more apparent in more countries. (6)
2 These days, with a single ..... . .... .. .. ... .. .. , you can order practically anything
online. (5)

4 A .... .. ... ..... ... .. .. is an entry posted on the microblogging service Twitter. (5)

5 Internet users can now easily swap music files ... ........... ... .... on their
computers. (6)

6 A ... ... ...... ... ... ... , or weblog, is a webpage containing information or opinions from
a particular person or about a particular subject, to which new information is added
regularly. (4)

58
 UNIT 10 ~~ ONLlNE BUSINESS

III Complete each sentence with the best word.

1 Social networking websites are often used by companies to communicate with their
customers, to solve problems or to .. .... ... cJ.......... a brewing crisis.

a) defuse b) turn on c) erupt

2 Some companies have used social media such as Twitter to ..... . ..... .. .. ...... out
public relations fires before they spread.

a) take b) throw c) put

3 The company's social media team attempts to track down dissatisfied customers ~
::0
and then contacts them in order to ........ ........... .. amends for poor service or faulty C
products. "'tJ
o
a) give b) make c) hold :em
4 By ... ...... ... . ........ discount alerts on Twitter, Dell has generated more than $lm in ::0
sales.

a) emitting b) activating c) broadcasting

5 The company's blog resolution team .. .... ... .... ... ..... the Web for comments, both
positive and negative, on our products and services.
a) trawl b) click c) tweet

6 All our staff have an intimate familiarity with social media, which enables them to be
... ....... .... .... .. . to the needs and wants of our customers.

a) arranged b) attuned c) showed up

7 The extraordinary expansion of social media has brought about a radical

............ ......... in the way companies communicate with their customers.

a) solution b) shift c) crash

8 A growing number of companies are putting together teams of high-level employees

whose role is to ...... .... ..... .. .. .. with social media.
a) familiarise b) involve c) engage

9 Other savings can be ......... ..... ....... through the Web's ability to reach many people
at once.
a) realised b) resolved c) done

10 eBay, an online .. ... ...... .... ...... site which was founded in 1995, enables Internet
users to trade with each other.

a) booking b) search c) auction

III Match these sentence halves.

1 Despite their very competitive prices,\a) has kept ticket prices relatively low.

2 The company's involvement in b) starting a dotcom is no guarantee you

controversial arms deals will make money hand over fist.

3 As our supplier was unable to meet c) they failed to retain their customer
the deadline for delivery, base .

4 There may be lots of success stories, d) they have always lived up to our
but expectations.

5 So far, cut-throat competition e) we had to cancel our order.

6 Their after-sales service may not f) severely damaged its reputation.

have an excellent reputation, but

59
UNIT 10 ~~ ONLlNE BUSINESS

El For each sentence, indicate in which of the underlined items there is a

mistake, then write the correction in the table below.
1 Although a lot of customers still lacking confidence(a) in Internet security, there is no
denying that (b) online shopping is growing in popularity in many Western countries(c).

2 Not only does e-business enable(a) companies to present their goods(b) in a more
attractive fashion and to handle orders online but they also result(c) in improved
margins for them .
3 The authorities have its reasons(a) for stopping on line gambling advertisements and
blocking people from using(b) credit cards to bet online(c) .

4 The use of e-mail has spread so rapidly(a) since the last 15 years(b) that it is hard to
imagine(c) life without it.

Sentence Incorrect item Correction

1
2
3
4

m Here is the first part of a Financial Times article by Lucy Kellaway.

Complete it with suitable words.

Business metaphors
The gloves are off. The creators be agile and we have to absorb Recently, I read that this bloody
of business metaphors have been blows. The point is helpfully sport has become newly fashionable
pulling their punches for more than summarised by various charts, as an activity doled out by the
a decade but have now come out diagrams and a two-by-two authorities to young delinquents
swinging. There is a new metaphor matrix with agility up one side to distract them ..... .......... ..... 7
in the management ring and, just in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . .3 absorption along drug-taking and knife crime.
case you are too punch-drunk after the other. However, ...... .. ..... .. ......8 discover
so many idioms to have guessed Curiously, the HBR doesn 't that boxing is now the very
what it is , here's the knockout blow: mention any ... .. ...... ... ... ... . latest fashion for management
it's boxing. the things about boxing that theorists is more surprising still.
The latest Harvard Business immediately come to my mind when The HBR article brings to
Review contains an ll-page article I think of it. In boxing, you get . .. . . ....... .. .. . .. . 9 end 15 years of

telling us that .... .. .tJ:,.!? ......1 best beaten to a pulp - which must ring a peace , love and political correctness
way to survive financial meltdown bell with anyone .. ........ ... ....... .5 by the purveyors of management
and global recession is to be like is now working on the economic metaphor. It is the first evidence I
Muhammad Ali when he met front line . In boxing, you are have seen from the management
George Foreman for their Rumble quite likely to wind up with brain guff industry ......... .. ........ ... . .10
in the Jungle in Kinshasa, Zaire. damage ....... .. .. .... . .... 6 you go 'soft ' is finally on its way out and
What the renowned boxer's on doing it for long enough - and, 'hard' is on its way in.
performance teaches us about if things get much worse in the
thriving in turbulent markets economy, this too may come to ring
... . . . .. • . . . . .. . . ....2 that we must all a bell .

60
 UNIT 10 ~~ ONLlNE BUSINESS

11 Complete the second part of Lucy Kellaway's article below with some of the
sentences a-g. You will only need five of the seven sentences.
a) There have been ape theories, geese theories and even frog theories.

b) We need to gain a fresh insight into the use of metaphors in business.

c) The idea of a business as a stream of DNA always struck me as moronic.

d) Even more popular than music as a metaphor has been sport.

e) We need to take fewer risks . -I

f) The great leader must not tell his players how to play but let them jam, ""
~
be creative and let it all hang out. »
z
g) As we all know, the main role of DNA molecules is the long-term storage c
of information. Ci)

~
3:
Since I started following these Sports without teams also get a 3:
things in the early 1990s, there look-in in the metaphor market, in
perfectly useless. I defy anyone to
show how any of them has helped
»
;;0
have been three different sorts of particular golf and a weird sled race us understand how businesses
metaphors wheeled out by gurus to with huskies that came into vogue a behave or help us get better at
help explain and prescribe business few years ago. running them .
behaviour, all benign. The first were The third, and daftest, seam of Metaphors can be helpful in
musical metaphors. There was the management metaphor comes from grasping something when the thing
.
idea of a company as an orchestra, scIence .. ......... ..... .... . .3 is terribly complicated. So , when
with the chief executive as the The point about a person's DNA Einstein was explaining relativity,
conductor. Each knowledge worker is that it does not change. The point he used a train and a clock to help
scraped away at her fiddle or blew about companies and business us understand something that would
his horn and the maestro waved a conditions is that they do . It may be otherwise have been beyond most
thin stick to bring them together in more plausible for gurus to talk the of us.
perfect time and harmony. language of evolution and describe By comparison, business - or
This metaphor was popular for companies as complex adaptive the theory of business - is terribly
a while but, as the Internet grew, systems - or it might be helpful if simple. We know what we need
gurus got groovier and decided that I could understand what they were to survive in troubled times and it
classical was out and jazz was in. driving at. A metaphor is meant to does not take 11 pages of boxing
. .. .. .. . .. . .. . ... . . .. 1 Presently, even simplify, not to obfuscate. parallels to tell us. We need to cut
this seemed too square and in 2002 Finally, there have been some costs. . ............... .... 5 We need
a Swedish writer said that the CEO outliers that fit none of the three to conserve cash. We need to pull
should be like a DJ, mixing records categories: management as akin to out of markets in which we are not
to match the mood on the dance being a top chef in a big kitchen successful. We need to fly economy
floor. and management likened to animal - or not at all. There are two things
..... . ..... .... . . . . . 2 Most of these behaviour. . ..... ...... ... ......4 The that we don't need to do: float like a
have been based on the idea that softest - and most famous was the butterfly or sting like a bee.
business is a team effort (which wretched mouse with the wretched
we know it isn't, really) . Football, cheese in the parable, Who Moved
rugby, rowing, cricket and baseball My Cheese?
have all taken their turn as trendy
management theories.
All of these metaphors have
one thing in common: they are III

61
 UNIT 10 H ONLlNE BUSINESS

El Write a report (maximum 150 words) on the chart below.

• The bar chart below shows the approximate percentage of households with Internet
access in four different countries in 2007 and in 2009.

• Use the information from the chart to summarise the changes.

100

90
Cl)
25 2007
r- 80
r-
Cl) . 2009
>
Z 70
C
"'tJ
~ 60
oz
c: 50
z
n
40
!t
-
oz 30

20

10

o
France Germany Sweden UK

D Match these sentence halves.

Protect your business against spam

1 Unsolicited commercial a) for their personal and professional

communications, or 'spam', communications.

2 Over the last ten years, spam has b) for service providers, businesses and
grown end-users alike.

3 The cost of spam to the global c) will therefore welcome the OECD's
economy is estimated 'Anti-Spam Toolkit' .

4 This is now causing enormous d) has turned into one of the major
financial costs and losses in problems affecting today's digital
productivity environment.

5 Users are increasingly dependent on e) thereby hindering the development of

the Internet and e-mail the information society.

6 Unfortunately, spam is sapping f) to account for almost 80 per cent of

user confidence and trust in online total e-mail traffic, with spammers
activities, sending hundreds of millions of
messages per day.

7 All stake holders in the digital g) at over 20 billion euros per year.
economy

8 The toolkit is an initiative designed h) can be found at http://www.oecd-

antispam.org.

9 More information about the OECD's i) to develop cross-border anti-spam

work on spam strategies.

62
 UNIT 10 ~~ ONLlNE BUSINESS

D ~)>> 30 Listen to the commentaries. For each bar chart 1-6, decide which
statement a), b) or c) is correct.

1 .... ....... .. ........ 2 ............ ..

120 40
r-""""s
Cl)
C
'0 100 '0
Ol
0. U
Cl) C
30 (J)
Cl) Ol
Ol
U
UOl
CIla.
80
.~
;tE
U)
-rr--
~

-0 0l0l
0l0l Ol:O (J)
Eo. >0
.;Eo
CO
-0
60
CIl~
.r::o.
o~
20 >
Z
.52 ..co\::
:o~
-r--
:;;:'" C
U
",Ol
0.0. 40
Cl)0l
"'tI
'0
wCl)
Cl) ::::c
'" 10 0

n
W '0 Z
.0
E 20 ~
0 c:
z'" Z
n
........
!i
I !-....I
0 0
France Sweden UK France Sweden UK
0
Z

3 .... .. .......... .. .. . 4 .. ...................

80 3000
Cl)
Cl)
Ol
70 C
'(ij
2500
en
.~
60
'"
.0
C cri
~ E
Cl)
2000
t: 50 .2
:5 gJO
.~

Ol 40 8 gs 1500
U ~c
~ 30
'0=
C
CIl
Cs .0 1000
:;;: '0
CIl
'0 20 2
~
0 .0
'0 500
10 Ui
0
()
0 liliiii I 0
France Sweden UK Italy Germany Canada

5 .. ............ .. .. .. . 6 .... ......... .. .. .. ..

6 400
Cl)
~

Cs
iL 350
0..
:;;: 5 0..
ID 0
C
Ol
(f) 300
::J
Cs 4 C
U
c~ =Ol 250
OlU
0l0l Cl)
:;;:CI)
CD ID 3 '"
Ol
C 200
.00. 0
'0.0 .r::
Olc.!) 0.
Ol~
0. ~ 150
Cl) 2 :.0
C 0
0 E 100
U
Ol
'0
C
C
Ui
0
0
()
50
()

0 I 0
Italy Germany Canada Italy Germany Canada

63