The document discusses a potential data sharing partnership between ShopSense and IFA and analyzes the business, financial, and ethical factors involved. It advises ShopSense to reconsider the partnership due to concerns that sharing customer data could damage customer trust, lead to unfair insurance rate increases, and hurt ShopSense's reputation and bottom line in the long run if handled negatively. The conclusion is that the partnership risks weakening ShopSense's core competencies and competitive advantage by decreasing its customer base.

1. Does it make Sense?!
IFA and ShopSense data sharing
partnership
By:
Keyon Bonner
George Helock
Joseph Richardson

2. Topics that will be highlighted :
• Business factors
• Financial gain/loss
• Ethical factors
• Advice to Shopsense
• Conclusion

3. Business Factors
• Remain loyal to core competencies “first”
• Remain customer focused
• We must ask the question, “will the IFA
data sharing partnering go against
ShopSense’s core competencies”
• Also, Shopsense should ask the question,
“does this activity bolster our core
competencies”

4. Business factors con’t
• Will the use of this information be used to
draw erroneous conclusions and exact
unfair rate increases, and what if any
damage would this have on the
relationship between Shopsense and our
customer base

5. Financial gain/loss
• Positive revenue gain: Deal will allow for
more revenue that may be translated and
returned back to the customer base in the
form of lower cost
• Negative side effects: If people feel their
insurance is going up because of what
they put into their shopping carts, this sort
on negative feeling could hurt
Shopsense’s bottom line in the long-run

6. Financial gain/loss con’t
• “Information is worth its weight in gold.”
Without Information on customer buying
behavior, Shopsense may loss
competitive advantage, hurting bottom line
in long-run
• Could loss revenue stream from core
competencies. “Customer may feel that
the store is selling them the products that
they are being rated on to receive
insurance rates”

7. Ethical factors
• Customer trust could vanish
instantaneously
• How much transparency should
Shopsense give customer base should the
deal proceed
• How much data will be shared
• Backlash if public views the transaction of
data sharing in a negative fashion

8. Ethical factors con’t
• Does Shopsense have a moral obligation
to its customers to protect customer
information

9. Advice to Shopsense
Shopsense should reconsider data sharing with IFA
because of many factors just outlined. The most
important of these factors would be the damage that
would be done to the reputation of Shopsense if a
negative element of this transaction were to be
associated with the sell of the data information. More
time should be spent to find a more suitable environment
for these actions. Shopsense should also take time to
find out whether their bottom line will suffer or be
enhanced by the decision, and serious consideration
should be taken into effect if whether Shopsense would
be enhanced for the future growth of the company. On
an ethical standpoint the company should consider
whether it will be doing a disservice to its customers by
selling their information to IFA.

10. Conclusion
It is of the thought of those
who partook in this study
that Shopsense not enter
into data sharing with IFA
because the negatives
outweigh the positives,
such that Shopsense may
see negative returns in
the form of fewer
customers, that would
weaken its core
competency and
decrease its competitive
advantage in its share of
the market.