Kudler Fine Foods is a high-class specialty food store. It has stores at three locations in San Diego Metropolitan Area, including Del Mar, La Jolla, and Encinitas. Kudler Fine Foods was founded on June 18, 1998 by Kathy Kudler. Kathy was fond of cooking gourmet foods and had good skills so, she planned of using her skills and start up a business. She started making profit by providing her cooking to the public. Since, the foundation of Kudler Fine Foods, the business has achieved great success levels. Now, it deals in variety of domestic and imported foodstuff, including fresh bakery and pastries, fresh meat and seafood, fresh products, packaged and condiments foods, wine, specialty dairy products and cheeses. Kudler Fine Foods has already stepped in to variety of food sales and still planning to expand services. It has started various programs for the customer services; frequent shopper program is one such program offered by the Kudler Fine Foods. The frequent shopper program will facilitate customers by providing opportunities of savings and help the company in making direct marketing. The program will track the purchasing behavior of every customer. The program would offer customers with loyalty points that would reward them with variety of gifts, including high-end gift items, specialty foods, and even airline first-class tickets.
Before implementing the frequent shopper program, the company would have to consider ethical, security, and legal measures using several database programs and an internet. There are four main types of ethical issues that includes accuracy, privacy, accessibility, and property issues. For purpose of tracking purchasing behavior of every customer, the information needs to be collected from reliable sources and be stored and disseminated accordingly. The collected information must be adequate and be pertained to the incentive objective. Most importantly, customers must be asked for permission before the company tracks their purchasing behavior.
During the second step of the program that is storing information, it should be confirmed if it is accurate and current. Moreover, it is highly important to keep this stored information confidential since, the information includes credit card numbers and shipping addresses; therefore, it must not be disclosed to third parties without permission by law. The installed server must be secure and safe enough to store this sensitive information. The Kudler Fine Foods use an internet to collect and store the information that may expose it two types of threats that are unintentional and intentional.
Unintentional threats can be classified into three main categories that are environmental hazards, human errors, and computer system failures. Environmental failures include natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, storms, power failures, and fires. However, there are certain environmental failures that are intentionally planned. It is important for the company to keep the off-site backup server to restore the data in case environmental hazard occurs. Most of the computer problems appear due to human errors like incorrect data entry into database or misread information or instruction. For such kind of errors, the company must counter check and train employees well. Computer system failures also occur due to human errors most of the time.
Intentional threats are ones that are intentionally planned to damage the system. These include viruses and hackers. Technical staff of the company take several measures to secure the system from such kinds of threats. These include data encryption, firewall, intrusion detection, access control, and various other tools to protect the system. These preventive measures help keeping the system safe from unauthorized users. It is important to keep this information as per law and for the repute of the company. It is the state law of California to fine the company if the private information of customers is leaked due to unsecure system of the company.
In addition, the Kudler Fine Foods must sign fair use agreement (FUA) before collecting customers’ information, so that the business does not get involved into making unethical choices. According to agreement, it would be bound to make fair use of collected information. This will help the company ensuring customers that their information would not be used for illegal or unethical purposes nor it would be disclosed. Still, it is very important to take the permission of customers before collecting their private information.
For purpose of making customers ensured that, their private information would remain safe in the company’s database; Kudler Fine Foods must hire the trained staff that could help in implementing data retention policies. Moreover, they must utilize encryption-based certificates. These methods will ensure customers that if in any case, data is stolen then how well the company would be able to retrieve the information and keep it safe and confidential. For this purpose, the company can also outsource data storage functions to third parties that have specialized staff in making secure data storage .
Conclusion
The Kudler Fine Foods’ frequent shopper program is worth investing; since, it can greatly help in increasing the profits of the company. However, the management staff of the company must make appropriate financial plan before investing in the program. It must not only focus on the implementation of the program, but also consider legal and ethical issues.
References
Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. P. (2012). Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm. Pearson.
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