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company can get the product to the customer at a reasonable cost. At a certain point, the cost of shipping an item, such as a refrigerator, can outweigh the benefits to the consumer. This is different if an e-business company has an existing chain of stores or outlets because it can let the customer pick a product up or have it delivered using its existing distribution process. Question 6:When people talk about selling content using e-business, what do they mean by content? Answer 6:Content can mean a wide variety of things. Today, content can include music, radio, TV shows, and online books. Companies even rent out content in the form of digital video discs (DVDs) that can be returned. In fact, any type of information is considered content. Question 7:Do businesses only deliver services using e-business? Answer 7:Many types of organizations use e-business to deliver services. Governments have begun to use e-business to allow people to make court filings as well as pay tickets and taxes. Nonprofit organizations also use e-business to provide a variety of levels of service to both the general public and their members. Question 8:Ordinarily, we think of participants in a marketplace as either customers or suppliers. How is this different with e-business? Answer 8:In an e-business market, participants are part of a value chain. At any time in that chain, they can be either a customer or a supplier of goods and services. This fact begins to break down the normal distinctions we make about businesses. Question 9:Did linking companies electronically start with the Internet? Answer 9:No. Companies have been doing business with one another for many years before the Internet came about and before the World Wide Web. Orders were phoned in, and at one time, the telegraph was used. More recently, companies used proprietary services and communications networks. For example, many companies used electronic data interchange (EDI) to set up and manage connections with suppliers. EDI was a standardized format for the secure transmission of order from one business to another. The EDI transactions were sent through private electronic networks called value added networks (VANs), and users were charged for access and sometimes for each transaction. Question 10:Why did companies move to the Internet for e-business? Answer 10:The Internet and the World Wide Web are free resources available to everyone. Once a company has