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This is not a revolutionary idea most retail stores now offer rewards programs associated with membership cards to better understand loyal customers and encourage spending through unique savings offers. Fred Meyer and Safely each have well known rewards memberships where you swipe your card at the register and receive discounts at the fuel pump. They have even gone as far as including clipping free coupons where you go online and load additional manufacture coupons to your card for ease of use at the register. Mellows loyalty card has many advantages and disadvantages for customers in the type of data it collects.
The major advantages come from the offers and rewards that can be given when Loses can look into wish lists and determine what items will yield the highest return by volume sales. The types of projects being managed can also be key to determining how and which departments to expand within the store. According to a press release from Low’s Companies regarding the new Mellows loyalty card, “it will revolutionize the customer experience with home improvement, allowing all purchases, in-store and online, to be tracked automatically and stored on their customer profile online” (Low’s Companies 2014).
By understanding our customer and the needs through usable data can turn into usable information for business decisions and maximize shareholders profits. Another major advantage for customers using the Mellows loyalty card is the tracking of purchased items. This tracking allows for returns without receipts because the company is tracking the data necessarily for returns. It offers less worry for customers and can improve customer loyalty to purchase a possibly more expensive product than competitors if customer service is improved and ease of returns if necessary.
Another aspect offered is the access to rainiest of purchased items and user manuals online for easy access. Any type of competitive edge is worth publicizing. And according to the SOOT analysis “Employee’s will enable our customers to track and manage their homes all in one place, and it will allow Low’s employees to be better equipped to help meet the needs of our customers” (Loses Companies 2014). This is the major advantage and push for most loyalty memberships which track all purchases and then can be segregated or grouped into location, type of housing and anticipate the future needs of its customers.
Mellows loyalty arid also has disadvantages for customers since it pulls personal information. As we have seen security issues with Loses competitor Home Depot. Security is on the minds of the consumers with debit and credit card information being compromised at Home Depot as well as the Target security breach. The further information Loses requests for loyalty membership will deter customers from joining. Data must be protected to keep customer trust and maintain its place in the industry. One article from Businesslike argues that while “Companies measure customer commitment by their transactions… At often has little to do with how people genuinely feel about the business” (McKee 2007). While the data collected from the Mellows loyalty card will provide more data about the customers it is important to understand it only represents a portion of the total customer base. The large volume of new data can bog down and confuse businesses if not handled properly. Our assignment this week is to research Amyl_ewe’s and provide the advantages and disadvantages the customer and Low’s face by using a data repository. First and foremost, what is a Employee’s card? According to their site the
Employee’s card, “allows you to view your complete purchase history online, including purchases made through Loses. Com and in-store transactions. Simply scan the card or provide the telephone number associated with the account at the register whenever you make purchases in a Low’s store. The Employee’s card comes in two convenient sizes, one that fits in a wallet and one that can be easily attached to a key ring. ” (Low’s) Fortunately, my husband and I shop at Low’s and have a Employee’s card/account so it makes it a bit easier to research the advantages from a customer perspective as they effect my family specifically.
First there is tracking purchases. This capability provides a means to go back historically and look at items previously purchased if it necessary to replace them and you don’t remember exactly what brand it was or how much you spent. Particularly in the area of paint, this capability is very useful in that you can store the exact color mixture and if you need more for touch-ups then the paint can be remixed. The page also lets you know whether the item is available online or not so that you could order it and have it delivered as opposed to visiting the store.
The site also revised the capability to create shopping lists where you Can list items that you need and see what the current price is and then plan your shopping according to what is needed and fits into your current budget. You can also set up reminders, such as, quarterly air filter purchases so that you have them readily available to change out instead of forgetting that you used your last one the previous month. A final advantage, which also see as a disadvantage, is the capability to set up a Home Profile with measurements of all your rooms and what you’ve purchased for those rooms or what you have landed to purchase.
This is a very useful feature when you want to re- design any room in the house and based on the dimensions you provide you will know instantly if your design choices will fit the space or not. I view it as a disadvantage because the small amounts of information can be pieced together to reveal a bigger picture of your home and provide security risks. Having dimensions of your home, where doors are located, what type of locks are installed, what type of garage door opener you use, etc. S a huge amount of data that could compromise the security of your home and family and a any hacker (or internal employee who may have a criminal intentions) would have all of this information (to include address and credit card info) right at their fingertips. That alone makes me very wary on using the Home profile option and quite honestly probably won’t because don’t want that information accessible to anyone. The bottom line is that no matter how secure a company says their servers are there are too many instances that have proven (Target, Home Depot, etc. That information is not 100% secured and the only true to way to ensure safety of that information is not to put it UT there. So how does Low’s benefit from all the data that is being gathered? Well ultimately it allows them to track high purchase items and ensure the availability at the time of year that consumers purchase them. In the spring consumers look for lawn and garden items, whereas, in the winter they’re looking for snow blowers, shovels, etc. On a larger scale the capability to track purchases provides a capability for targeted marketing.
As mentioned in one of my research sites, they discuss how Employee’s works and how their first purchase of bullet edger’s for a landscaping project enabled a second arches online to be connected to their original in-store purchase using the primary key of the Employee’s card. This then enabled, “an email from Low’s with the subject line “It’s the Perfect Time for your Perfect Yard. ” (Whenever, 2013) This is no coincidence, it is targeted marketing at work and more times than not repeat customers will respond more positively to emails that are targeted to their wants and needs as opposed to something they would never go looking for.
As for disadvantages, I believe the same disadvantage mentioned above with the customer in regards to security is the same one I old mention in the case of the company and trying to secure the large volumes of data they are gathering. Loses main rival Home Depot just recently admitted to a data breach in which their payment systems were compromised. “Home Depot, the nation’s largest home improvement retailer, confirmed Monday afternoon that its payment data systems have been breached. The confirmation comes less than a week after the retailer first disclosed the possibility of a breach.
In an attempt to help customers and avoid some of the fallout that has plagued data-breach victim Target -? Home Depot also said on Monday that it is offering free identity protection services to customers who may have been affected by the breach. ” (McGrath, 2014) Home Depot and Target now have to deal with concerned customers who question whether they want to shop at their stores, as well as, lawsuits from customers who were affected by the breach. We shop at these stores in conjunction with Low’s and since we bank with USA, both times we were issued new debit cards and our old ones were deactivated.
Fortunately for us, USA is proactive in addressing these types of issues, but many out there aren’t that lucky and lose money out of their accounts and have their credit history ruined. Therefore, Low’s and companies like them who want to implement these data repositories must also invest in hardcore security solutions to protect the data they collect. Conclusion With the technological advancement and global presence, organizations require to capture, store and analyze the data both structured and unstructured formats in large volumes of up to Terabytes and Potables for effective analysis, business intelligence and predictive analytics.
Business Intelligence (31) provides the methodologies and tools for organizations to provide information in informed and timely manner thereby reducing risks in decision-making process and giving competitive advantage for the organizations. Analytics provides organizations to predict consumer behaviors, ensure effective supply chain, effective risk management & avoidance, identification of problem location and driving financial performance (Milliken, 2014, p. 23).