Pick one e-commerce company on the Internet, for example, Ashford.com, Buy.com, Yahoo.com, or Priceline.com. Study the Web pages that describe the company and explain its purpose and structure. Look for articles at Web sites such as Bigcharts.com or Hoovers.com that comment on the company. Then visit the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Web site at www.sec.gov and access the company’s 10-K (annual report) forms showing income statements and balance sheets. Select only the sections of the 10-K form containing the desired portions of financial statements that you need to examine and download them into your spreadsheet. (Hint: When you find the page that lists specific forms, select the text version. Do not select the HTML version. The Laudon Web site for Chapter 4 provides more detailed instructions on how to download this 10-K data into a spreadsheet.) Create simplified spreadsheets of the company’s balance sheets and income statements for the past three years.

          Is the company a dot-com success, borderline business, or failure? What information forms the basis of your decision? Why? When answering these questions, pay special attention to the company’s three-year trends in revenues, costs of sales, gross margins, operating expenses, and net margins. The Laudon Web site provides definitions of these terms and how they are calculated. Prepare an overhead presentation (minimum of five slides), including appropriate spreadsheets or charts, and present your work to your professor and/or classmates. If the company is successful, what additional business strategies could it pursue to become even more successful? If the company is a borderline or failing business, what specific business strategies (if any) could make it more successful?