Kudler's Frequent Shopper Program Faults
Mario Samuel
BSA/310
2 April 2012
Professor Shroads

Abstract
Kudler Fine Foods is a consumer friendly business looking for ways to reward their customers for being loyal to them. There are legal, ethical, and cost effective issues that will prevent them from going forward with the current plans they have. The excuse of not knowing about the law does not prevent a Kudler Fine Foods from breaking it.

Kudler Fine Foods is a growing company trying new ways to make themselves become more successful. They came up with a plan to track purchase behavior at the individual customer level while providing high value incentives through a partnership with a loyalty points program called the frequent shopper program. The program is not focused on giving discounts to Kudler products but rather to other incentives such as first-class airline upgrades or high-end gifts. This brings up multiple issues in the areas of being legal, information security, ethical, and cost effectiveness of the program. One may say being ignorant to the law should not allow what is done right or wrong. For example, beverages left in hotels that are charged on guest credit cards if it is consumed. The guest may argue that they did not know they had to pay for the beverages, but in all actuality the sign was right there saying water is five dollars and coke is nine dollars. The sign for Kudler Fine Food is the Privacy Act of 1974 that states, "no agency shall disclose any record which is contained in a system of records by any means of communication to any person, or to another agency, except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior consent of, the individual to whom the record pertains, unless disclosure of the record would be-- etc." The privacy act goes on to mention things pertaining to the law, but it did not exempt sharing information about consumers to other agencies being a good or legal thing. The service request done by Kudler nor their sales and marketing department state that they will first notify the customer for his or her approval to share his or her information with other companies. To claim ignorance to the law will not be an excuse in the court of law. Once this crime is committed by Kudler Fine Foods, the law will get them whether the same day or the next year it will eventually will catch up to them. Information security is not to be taken lightly, especially not to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). NIST has an information technology laboratory designated by the government to promote the United States economy and public welfare by providing technical leadership for the Nation's measurement and standards infrastructure. NIST is not a hard place to get in contact with. Kudler Fine Foods has a department solely for legalities. The frequent shopper program developers need to seek legal advice so that they do not be unethical to their loyal customers. The unknown is a great risk jumping into. As a consumer myself, I want to be notified if my information is being shared with other agencies whether it be my name or how often I select chicken instead of beef. That is not the only information that runs the risk of being sent over the web. With a program like this, other agencies will be intertwined with Kudler making consumers information to be accessible in more places. Kudler definitely will suffer a loss of consumers if this program go through in the path it is taking. The good consumer to business relationship that Kudler provides will not allow them to be unethical. Even if Kudler gets all the legalities squared away, they still run into a bigger bill than they expect. Someone will pay for the things Kudler are offering. For example, I purchase "x" pounds of poultry from Kudler 20 times last month so I qualify for an upgrade to my next American Flight. I was not the only consumer to do this, but so did 50 other consumers. Kudler will then have to pay for 50 upgrades toward 50 American flights. All 50 consumers will not be using one airline either, therefore, Kudler will have to pay money to multiple airlines. Another example of the kind of money Kudler will have to pay out for prizes is geared to the high-end gift incentive. The first thing that came to mind when seeing the words high-end incentives was jewelry. The price of jewelry is not going down like the value of cash is. To pay for 50 gold watches will be a steep bill for Kudler to take care of. Kudler did not mention including a price on joining the frequent shopper program. It was requested for solely to reward repeat customers with something extremely good. The intentions of rewarding consumers is not a bad one, but with the kind of technology around now is not worth loosing the whole company because of legalities or losing one consumer. By not knowing exactly where these high-end gifts are going to come from, it runs an even bigger information security risk. Airline companies are not going to simply agree to giving out flight information on any of their customers to a food company trying to be more successful. Flight information will not be given out because it runs the risk of identity theft. Especially after 9/11, TSA is not going to have secure flight information distributed so loosely. Kudler Fine Foods has good intentions of rewarding their customers but not in the right way. The frequent shopper program is not the way to go about rewarding their consumers. The legal fines or even losing the business is not worth tracking what consumers purchase. The development of the frequent shopper program needs to seek legal advice that will advice them to discontinue putting the program together. Ignorance to the law is not an excuse to get away with a crime whether the person or business committing the crime did not know a crime was being committed.

References Apollo Group. (2007, 2010, 2011). Kudler fine foods. Retrieved from https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/secure/aapd/cist/vop/Business/Kudler2/internet/index.asp
Apollo Group. (2011). Smith services consulting. Retrieved from https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/secure/aapd/cist/vop/ServiceRequests/index.asp#Kudler Fine Foods
Department of Justice. (2006). The privacy act of 1974. Retrieved from http://www.justice.gov/opcl/privstat.htm
Kissel, R. (2008). Information Security. Department of Justice. Retrieved from http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-64-Rev2/SP800-64-Revision2.pdf Transportation Security Administration. (2012). Secure Flight Program. Retrieved from http://www.tsa.gov/what_we_do/layers/secureflight