Giving away our information

When we are online all our moves are being tracked as a personal profile is being created for us. Recent searches on Google are the most common, you start typing and what you need is already spelled out for you. Convenient? Maybe. The fact that anything we write on our computer, laptop and or smart phone is being tracked may be cause for alarm. Many people know this and are cautious, while others just choose to ignore it and are less careful of what information they disclose while they are online. What many people do not suspect is that just as we are being tracked for our online research habits, stores may also track our shopping habits. Especially when we pay for our purchases with a debit card or use a store rewards cards because then the store has a record or a profile of our buying habits (record of what we usually buy).

I believe this kind of data mining or research without consent is cause for ethical concern. First, this type of research is being done without my consent. It only benefits the store or merchant doing the research. Even though I may receive a discount coupon for future purchases and it may seem like a benefit to me as a consumer/customer, it really does not benefit me as a person. It is true that no one is being hurt or physically harmed by this data mining, but it still feels like an invasion of privacy.

This type of targeted marketing becomes a cause for ethical concern when it reaches a point where the merchant is not only using the information you provide him with, but also generates a deeper research of our buying patterns to create a profile. According to the article: “How Target Figured out a teen girl was pregnant before her father did”, we learn that Target assigns every customer a guest ID number tied to their credit card, name, or email address that becomes a bucket or a file that stores a history of everything they’ve bought and any demographic information Target has collected from them or bought from other sources. All of this is done without the customer’s consent or knowledge. I believe that receiving coupons that are relevant to our lifestyle is very convenient, but I also believe that the person receiving the coupons should have the right to sign up for them not just have them randomly show up at their house on a mailer from the store. One main issue or concern may be when this guest ID information makes it way to the wrong person and the information is used for something other than marketing. If we consider Kant’s Categorical Imperative and focus on the action, we may consider this target marketing as an invasion of privacy. The act of investigating buying patterns goes beyond traditional methods of marketing. Another reason it is invasion of privacy is because they collect more information about the customer, than the customer is aware of.

Target obtains a "pregnancy prediction score" based on your purchases,
then sends you specific coupons based on how far along you are.

In the case of the angry father who went to Target to complaint about his daughter receiving a mailer targeted towards a “mother-to-be”, we can see how targeted marketing may be cause for anger. The ethical obligation of the Target manager towards the angry customer was to apologize and that is exactly what he did. When the manager went the extra mile and called the customer to apologize again, he found out that Target was right and that the customer’s daughter really was pregnant. But was it up to Target to make this information public and available by sending the mailer with coupons? It wasn’t the manager directly who sent the mailer and in this case he did what he thought was right and apologized.


As they said towards the end of the article, people tend to feel uncomfortable or “creeped out” that the company knew about their pregnancies in advance. I believe that by sending mailers with various coupons but including the maternity friendly ones, the company is still targeting that specific person and that is still unethical, when it is not solicited. On the other hand if we consider Mill’s Utility Principle and focus on the outcome, we may see that the two parties involved have an advantage or “win” in this scenario. Target wins because the pregnant women use the coupons (when they are in a mixed mailer) and they have a profit because of it. The women who use the coupons don’t feel like they are being spied on, they feel comfortable using the coupons and they save money. And even though it may be unsolicited by using the coupons the women do not seem to be bothered by the coupons.

If we look at the code of ethics for Public Relations Professionals, under Expertise it says: “We acquire and responsibly use specialized knowledge and experience.” To me, this means that the PR professional will use their knowledge and experience for positive purposes or the good of the company that he/she represents. The use of knowledge and technology to create a client ID or profile may seem to go against this statement because it is not a responsible way to obtain the information. The responsible way would be to obtain the information and distribute the coupons with customer consent. And this takes us me to the ethical perspective of Communitarianism. If we consider the terms “fairness for all”, “same starting point” and “equal playing fields”, then we can say that targeted marketing goes against all those terms. 

According to the article, in their research they noticed that women on the baby registry were buying larger quantities of lotion around their second trimester, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of their pregnancy, according to their pregnancy prediction scores achieved by the data collected from their purchases. Lets say that I am a woman who has very dry skin and I need body lotion and go to Target to buy it, I will pay regular price versus the pregnant woman who received a coupon in the mail. There is no fairness since I will not be saving any money on my purchase. Target marketing does not provide an equal playing field for all customers.

If I were to change this concept of targeted marketing I would consider Bok’s ethical decision-making and ask myself the three questions:

1.     How do I feel about these actions? I feel like they are unfair.  And invasion of privacy since I do not want my information used for research.

2.     Is there another professionally acceptable way to achieve the same goal that will not raise ethical issue? The best way would be to collect the data with the customers’ consent and let them know about the research and that the coupons will be tied to their buying habits especially for them. Otherwise just send all customers who don’t consent of the research the same ad.

3.     How will others respond to the proposed act? Clients will feel like they are in control versus feeling like they are being spied on.

In the end it is the customer who should decide what information he/she wants the company to use and where they make their purchases. Everyone should decide when it is safe to use cash, debit or credit card, keeping in mind that bank/account information will be obtain from the retailer. 

With so many cards to choose from today,
it is easy for our information to be "everywhere".

Store specific cards make it easier for the retailer to obtain
even more information about us and our shopping habits.