Kudler Food frequent shopper
Annmarie Stancliff
BSA/310
August 24, 2014
Joseph Rezendes
Kudler Food frequent shopper

KFF Current System
Kudler Fine Foods is a food service company located out of San Diego and has three locations in Del Mar, La Jolla and Encinitas, California as well as listing on the internet. Sales and marketing already have a system in place that can keep track of all of their sales and performs a data analysis of this information. Kudler Fine Foods is now looking to add to this system a frequent shopper program. (Kudler Fine Foods, 2013) This program is intended to provide extra saving to participating customers as well as provide the company with information to provide direct marketing to these customers. Through the direct mailings KFF will offer specialty cooking classes to their customer base. While offering these classes, they are expecting to attract new customers to their company. They are hoping that through the implementation of this program to increase the company’s revenue through customer loyalty.

Legal Concerns
For this program to be successful, KFF needs to have in place a secure database system to prevent outside access to the customer database. They need to adhere to the privacy rights of the customers that they may be accessing through emails and other forms of electronic communication. (ACLU - American Civil Liberties Union, 2014) The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), passed in 1986, makes it illegal for companies to share, or give out, personal information of their customers. In the event that KFF would be requested to share this information, they should contact the customer and inform them of this request and the action that was taken.
Ethical Considerations
Another concern that KFF should be aware of is their liability if they were to use their customer information for unethical uses. (Stim, 2010)Implementing some form of personal release agreement with customers when they sign up will help defer and litigation that may occur when sharing any of the personal information provided. However, this will not prevent the possibility of litigation if the information is used for unethical reasons. The selling of this personal information to outside companies, for marketing reasons, could indeed cause KFF to be sued by a customer or organization. Another example of this would be if they were to provide information to other vendors or business partners in exchange for other incentives.
Another aspect to consider when using this information to contact their customers is the method in which they do so. A customer may consider phone calls or emails to be intrusive to them. The company may see these types of interaction as a means of rewarding a customer for their loyalty; however, they need to consider that the customer may think of this as abuse of information. Therefore, if they do have some type of agreement with the customer on accepted ways of communication, they won’t risk the potential loss of an upset customer.

Information Security
As noted earlier, it is imperative that the company employ some kind of software or defense system to protect their information systems. However, just installing and setting up this type of protection is not the final step to any security issues. As with all computers, programs and peripherals, they will become outdated and vulnerable if not tended to properly. It is important for the company to consider having an IT specialist on hand to