Wal-Mart is Surfing on a Database of Advantages & Ethical Dilemmas!

Wal-Mart has tons of shopper history also known as data that allows them to predict “what’s going to happen, instead of waiting for it to happen,” as Wal-Mart’s chief information officer, Linda M. Dillman says in "What Walmart Knows About Customers' Habits."


Because of the insights made from Wal-Mart’s database the company was able to know what to increase in stock when Hurricane Charley hit. This knowledge is power and equates to profit and Wal-Mart definitely uses it as a competitive advantage.

This of course is a benefit for Wal-Mart but to others all this customer data that is being collected raises debates on privacy issues and ethical dilemmas. Your information as a consumer at Wal-Mart is gathered at checkout, recorded, mapped, updated by store, by state and then by region!

Wal-Mart has 460 terabytes of data stored on their customers! The internet has less than half as much data! In most cases this data is stored for indefinite lengths of time.

Wal-Mart uses this data to answer discount retailing’s rabbinical questions dealing with things such as store operation decisions.

Wal-Mart does share some of its data with its suppliers, which I would imagine strengthened their relationship with suppliers. In 2006, Wal-Mart decided to tighten the reigns on their data and announced it would no longer sell its data to outside companies, which in my opinion was a smart idea because in the long run I’d imagine it would hurt the company’s goodwill if anyone abused its data, which would negatively outweigh any revenue they’d obtain from selling the data. The more control they have over the data the less likely their will be abuse of the data by anyone. Most customers have no clue their shopping habits are being monitored as they shop, which also raises questions of whether this data gathering is ethical. Wal-Mart does take reasonable steps to protect personal information. While the company definitely benefits from customers data, so are customers. The efficiency that is enabled by all of the data drives down costs, and in turn is carried over to customer savings. I fully trust the steps Wal-Mart has taken to protect my information because they not only care about my privacy they care about self-preservation and would not want to deal with law suits and decrease their public image.

Wal-Mart is coined the Supply and Command store because of the power its database gives it. Its data enables the company to operate on a level of efficiency that no other company can match!