Free Essay Analyzing Peers' Responses to the Article about Smartphone Location Data

Response to Joshua

Joshua's response to the first question is relevant and addresses the full scope of the question. According to Joshua, location sharing helps the malls in determining the locations of customers and the distance covered by each customer to access the mall. Hence, it is important for supermarkets to know the location of each customer to enhance proper service delivery.

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In most cases, customers purchase goods that require mall transport services. The malls can only help in transporting goods after ascertaining the location of their customers (Frank et al., 2013). Joshua also claims that location sharing is important in malls that run online platforms. In online platforms, customers purchase virtual goods that are later transported to their respective residential locations. Being that mall customers reside in different locations, the cost of goods transportation may differ from one location to the other, hence, making location sharing a good idea.

John had a problem responding to the second question considering the use of customer demographics and psychographics breached privacy. Most of the marketers use customers' purchase history, demographic and psychographic to enhance their sales volume. The psychographic part of marketing deals with the gathering of information on the customer's opinion, values and personality attributes. Demographic involves the study of a cultural setting or population. Online marketers have used the three aspects of marketing for years to boost customer purchase power. For instance, a marketer may monitor the location of a customer through location sharing and study the demographics of the region (Frank et al., 2013). After the study, he or she can then create a marketing Ad that suits the region. Although the use of the three marketing aspects is good for business, John is justified to link it to the breach of customer privacy.

In the third Question, John is right in the use of proxies to safeguard customer information. Apart from marketing, sharing of locations may also be detrimental to the customers or patients (Frank et al., 2013). In most cases, people with serious medical condition always tend to browse pharmaceutical websites. Such customers are curious about finding a medical solution to their problems. Apart from the use of proxies, people with a medical condition may also use pseudo names to conceal their identities.

Response to Elaine

Elaine's response to the first question is almost similar to that of Joshua. Just like Joshua, Elaine claims that location can help marketers in knowing the right message to pass to the public. According to Elaine, retailers can use smartphone MAC addresses to identify customers and how they behave in the online market platform. Although Elaine's claims are justified, She did not explain how a customer's location can be identified through smartphone MAC addresses. It is true that some retailers can monitor all the mark addresses connected to their WiFi network, but cannot access customer's location (Yi et al., 2014). While connected to the Wifi network, the customer's approval is needed to access his or her location. Elaine is still right considering that some supermarkets or retailers may create a feature that requests customers to share their location for proper service delivery.

Elaine urges scientists to come up with a technique that links brick and motor behavior in online stores. The method suggested by Elaine is good considering that it will help customers to link their MAC addresses to credit cards to enhance quick service delivery (Yi et al., 2014). Although it is a good idea to link credit cards and Smartphone MAC addresses, the issue of privacy concern remains unaddressed. In the second question, Elaine considers the use of demographic, psychographic and purchase of data history as an act that defies privacy concerns. Elaine argues that many consumers give third parties access to their locations without knowing the consequences attached to it.

According to surveys and information gathered from various articles and publications, the use of demographics and psychographics in marketing is a security risk on the side of customers. The third question was also well addressed. Elaine also suggests the use of pseudo login details to protect people with medical conditions from being tracked online. According to her, people with medical conditions go through online pharmaceutical websites to find a solution.

Response to Rachel

Rachel in her response to question one claim that all the location data collected in the malls are channeled to Bloomberg terminals to other data analysis companies. The Bloomberg service produces financial data from the customer data, hence, makes trading tools that can benefit companies that subscribe to the service. According to Rachel, Sharing of customer information helps in boosting the business industry (Yi et al., 2014). Customer information serves as a basis of business research. Although the location sharing is ideal according to Rachel, customer privacy is not well addressed in her response.

In the second question, Rachel describes the meaning of demographic, psychographic and customer purchase history. She further supports the use of the three marketing aspects by explaining their importance in a business setting. Companies experience difficulties in accessing censor reports, social media data and IP addresses (Yi et al., 2014). According to Rachel, the use of demographic, psychographics and customer purchase history give instant information that is beneficial to businesses. The reasons given by Rachel in support of the second question are clear and ideal except for the fact that privacy concern is not addressed.

In response to the third question, Rachel claims that people with serious medical conditions access the internet because there are no privacy laws that govern online search. The privacy of the online searches is left at individual and business level. It is the responsibility of an individual to protect his or her data (Yi et al., 2014). According to Rachel, people with privacy concern may use anonymous surfing modes or anonymous emailing which conducting searches online to protect their privacy. Rachel's response to the third question addressed all that the question needed.

References

Frank, S., Starr, R., Ruckart, J., Tischer, S., & Zellner, S. (2013). U.S. Patent No. 8,489,110. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Yi, X., Paulet, R., Bertino, E., & Varadharajan, V. (2014, March). Practical k nearest neighbor queries with location privacy. In Data Engineering (ICDE), 2014 IEEE 30th International Conference on (pp. 640-651). IEEE.