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Target Business Ethics

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“If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn’t want us to know, can you do that?,” asked by Andrew Pole’s colleagues. In today’s day and age of technology, data mining can be easily used to compile huge capacities of data that is validated to calculate patterns of the data from the information such as name, address, date of birth, credit card numbers, and social security numbers that people have submitted to the Internet through purchases, advertising, and profiles everyday. Although data mining seems harmless, it allows companies to gather information to improve the business by making ethical decisions; therefore, this can raise concerns with privacy and security of the person and/or their personal information that …show more content…

The misuse of information is not ethical when making a business-decision using customer purchasing patterns or demographics. From a Deontological Approach, The Josephson Institute of Ethics describes ethical behavior well: “Ethics is about how we meet the challenge of doing the right thing when that will cost more than we want to pay. There are two aspects to ethics: The first involves the ability to discern right from wrong, good from evil, and propriety from impropriety. The second involves the commitment to do what is right, good, and proper. Ethics entails action; it is not just a topic to mull or debate.” (3) “Back to Just because it’s publicly available” and “everyone does it” does not make it ethically the right thing to do. If not careful in the end there will be a consequence of unethical behavior and can be a wide variety of results depending on the act. The example used in the Target Research Case of a Target Guest buying baby aspirin that reveals that the person might also be interested in buying toys whom has not done so before could cause trouble and can be unethical if not analyzed correctly. The problem is that Target Guest might not actually have children and the reason for buying baby aspirin is because it is easier on the stomach of an elder individual who has no children or grandchildren. If using multiple purchases of children products (like baby food, baby diapers) and not just aspirin, this would be more ethical to send the customer a coupon for toys. Why is this plausible reason in getting that customer to buy toys if they have not bought toys before? “We knew that if we could identify them in their second trimester, there’s a good chance we could capture them for years,” Pole said. “As soon as we get them buying diapers from us, they’re going to start buying everything else

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