MIS Practice 4 ā Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which competitive strategy, as described by Porter, involves targeting a narrow market segment with either low cost or differentiation?
- Cost leadership
- Broad differentiation
- Focus strategy (Correct answer)
- Value chain integration
Correct answer: Focus strategy
Porter's focus strategy concentrates on a specific customer segment or geographic market, applying either cost or differentiation within that niche.
Question 2: What is the key distinction between structured and unstructured data?
- Structured data is encrypted; unstructured data is not
- Structured data fits predefined schemas; unstructured data does not follow a specific format (Correct answer)
- Structured data is stored in the cloud; unstructured data is stored on-premises
- Structured data is read-only; unstructured data is read-write
Correct answer: Structured data fits predefined schemas; unstructured data does not follow a specific format
Structured data conforms to a defined model (e.g., relational tables), while unstructured dataālike emails or videosāhas no predefined format.
Question 3: An organization uses software agents to automatically execute stock trades when market conditions meet predefined criteria. This is best described as:
- Decision Support System
- Intelligent agent / automated system (Correct answer)
- Management Information System
- Group Decision Support System
Correct answer: Intelligent agent / automated system
Intelligent agents autonomously monitor conditions and execute actionsāsuch as tradesāwhen specified rules or thresholds are met.
Question 4: Which component of Porter's value chain is considered a PRIMARY activity?
- Human resource management
- Technology development
- Outbound logistics (Correct answer)
- Firm infrastructure
Correct answer: Outbound logistics
Porter's primary activities include inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing & sales, and serviceāall directly tied to product delivery.
Question 5: A company stores customer purchase history to personalize future marketing emails. Which privacy principle is most directly relevant?
- Data minimization
- Purpose limitation (Correct answer)
- Storage limitation
- Accountability
Correct answer: Purpose limitation
Purpose limitation requires that data collected for one purpose (purchase processing) not be repurposed (marketing) without proper justification or consent.
Question 6: In a relational database, a foreign key is used to:
- Encrypt sensitive columns
- Uniquely identify each record in a table
- Establish a link between two related tables (Correct answer)
- Speed up full-table scan queries
Correct answer: Establish a link between two related tables
A foreign key in one table references the primary key of another table, enforcing referential integrity between related records.
Question 7: Which business continuity concept defines the maximum tolerable period that a system can be down before causing unacceptable business impact?
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO) (Correct answer)
- Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
- Service Level Agreement (SLA)
Correct answer: Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
RTO specifies the maximum acceptable downtime after a disruption before the business suffers critical consequences.
MIS Practice 4
Which competitive strategy, as described by Porter, involves targeting a narrow market segment with either low cost or differentiation?