How can these companies leverage the customer data responsibly and ethically?
Transparency is very essential in maintaining customer loyalty in any business environment. Other than ethics perspective of transparency, it builds customer loyalty; it also acts as a tool for the maintenance of the customers and claiming and sustaining competitive advantage in a business environment. Many organizations breach this virtue of transparency, and some find themselves losing the trust they have built for long with their customers. The importance of ethics cannot be underestimated in an organization. In this case, the organization acted controversy in a situation where they could have done better.
Firstly, the IFA Company’s chief execrative admitted that the company depended on the broker list of customers who purchased some specific drugs or products from different organizations, entirely wrong shops and retails since they did not gather and used them in the right way. The company could have used some complementary assessment to give their customers a chance of participation through filling them instead of buying information unethically. In this form, they could have collected and used this data ethically. Secondly, the companies would have at least engaged customers when receiving their information and assure them that their data are protected. They could enhance transparency which is critical when handling customer’s data.
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Thirdly, sharing the customer data is an ethically inacceptable behavior. The companies should not have shared the customer's data since incase the customers come across it; trust is lost. For instance, ShopSense should have not sold their data. By so doing, it breached the client’s ethical boundaries.
What ethical issues are raised by the situation in the case study?
Shop Sense
This company breaches the confidentiality and hence stretched the boundaries of ethics unlawfully. ShopSense accepted and willingly sold their customer loyalty cards data which had all the information about their clients. This unethical since the customers were never engaged when this deal was being signed. It is unethically right to use somebody’s personal information for self-interest without having the individual' consent.
IFA
This company breached many ethical issues. First, they acquire the customer information’s illegal. For instance, they bought the list of clients’ information from brokers. The list had personal demographic information about the customers from different shops and retails. The health information of the client was also acquired illegally by this company. By doing so, the company breached the privacy of the customers as well as breached their confidentiality. Alternatively, this company planned and bought the client's loyalty cards from the ShopSense, one of the plans they have with these data was to use them to monitor customers. They have even gone ahead to plan how they would bribe the drivers and install some devices that would monitor them when they are driving. Ethically, this is going against individual privacy which is morally non-acceptable. Secondly, the company used a lot of many in bribing and influencing people to make a decision. The drivers, those who sold data and even the ShopSense were all given money to influence their decision. This is ethically wrong. An ethical decision should be made willingly.
Providing value from the data
The companies should use the customer information and data with the intention of doing no harm. For instance, they should not track the customers as this will go against their privacy. Secondly, they two companies should not let their customer know that their privacy is being jeopardized. Thirdly, the data should not be exposed to the public.
Avoid the ethical problems you identified
For the respect of customer privacy, a correct channel should be followed while collecting confidential customer data. For instance, methods such as satisfactory customer survey, assessment test, and many others can be explored to gather data. Secondly, the client should be consented before the company goes ahead and use their data. Lastly, the decision on whether or not to sell or provide data should be made without influence.
