You’ve Got A Mole Giving Away Your Sensitive Data
Written by Todd L. MichaudFebruary 17th, 2010
Retailers everywhere are losing sensitive information to their competitors every day. It’s not because some hacker has compromised the corporate database or because some corporate espionage team has gone dumpster diving after a corporate meeting. No, the people responsible for this breach are actually your own customers.
Franchisee Columnist Todd Michaud adds that the kicker is that most retailers don’t even know it’s happening. We're talking about your closest competitors having access to some of your customer profiles (at a much deeper level than what you probably are aware of), the purchase patterns of those customers and the amount they are spending on each visit. And you have no idea. Sound scary? It is.
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One Comment | Read You’ve Got A Mole Giving Away Your Sensitive Data
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Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk.com? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
-Christine
February 18th, 2010 at 11:02 pm
Why fight it when you can join it? If people are going to give away their opinions, their purchasing habits, their customer experiences, savvy retailers should be doing all they can to harvest and exploit this data.
Right now retailers see trends only as they unfold in their own stores, or through expensive research. And they may be colored by their desire to see their own trends succeed. This is a chance to see a broader spectrum of data. And it may be best for the smaller retailers, the ones who can’t afford to carry a lot of inventory. If they can react quickly to trends that are selling elsewhere, they could really improve margins.