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What Competitive Strategies Are The Companies Discussed in This Case Pursuing?
What Competitive Strategies Are The Companies Discussed in This Case Pursuing?
The impact of smart, Internet-connected products is just now being understood. Smart products
offer new functionality, greater reliability, and more intense use of products while providing
detailed information that can be used to improve both the products and the customer experience.
They expand opportunities for product and service differentiation. When you buy a wearable
digital health product, you not only get the product itself, you also get a host of services available
from the manufacturer’s cloud servers. Smart products increase rivalry among firms that will either
innovate or lose customers to competitors. Smart products generally raise switching costs and
inhibit new entrants to a market because existing customers are trapped in the dominant firm’s
software environment. (Laudon and Laudon, 2017, p. 129)
Are there any ethical issues raised by these smart products such as their impact on
consumer privacy?
Explain your answer
Yes indeed ethical issues are raised by these smart products as far as consumer privacy is concerned.
For example, MapMyFitness collects data about a user’s name, e-mail address, birth date, location,
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performance, and profile if the user connects to the app using social media. Under Armour does
not sell identifiable personal data about individuals to third parties but does provide advertisers with
aggregate information about app users. Under Armour is hoping that daily use of its smartphone
apps will build stronger ties to customers that will lead to stronger sales of its own apparel,
footwear, and other athletic gear. (Laudon and Laudon, 2017, p. 130)
Ethical issues raised by these products has to do with the security threat associated with the leaks of
personal information. People would not want to associate with products that tend not take security
consciousness that serious. They would rather avoid such products. There is that aspect of third
parties buying these consumer data for targeted advertisements. Potential clients would have trust
issues with firms who trade off customers’ personal information Regarding the property right on
data and information, the difficulties will appear from the correct identification of the authors – for
example, an answer to the question” Who is the owner of the data retrieved by the sensors of the
objects connected to the Nike+ SportWatch GPS?” When the information is personal, things get
more serious. The ethical lapses will make the boundaries between the public and private space be
invisible, and people will not know where their information ends up. The Big Brother type
surveillance, namely monitoring the individuals without them being aware of it will be possible.
The objects will be equipped with sensors which will allow them to”see”,”hear” or even “smell”.
The data registered by the sensors will be sent in great quantities and in different ways through
networks, which will bring prejudice to the individual private life. (Popescul & Georgescu,
Internet of Things – Some Ethical Issues, 2014 p.5)
By means of sophisticated technologies, the geographic place where a person is and his movements
from one place to another can be easily found without his knowledge. The information collected
from a chip implanted with the person’s consent (for medical purposes) might be maliciously used.
There might be profiles/accounts created for individuals depending on their activity culture and
evil outsiders might make decisions related to them. The digital divide will increase with smart
products usage, and it will be understood only by experts. It is debatable whether there is possible a
fair distribution of benefits and costs as well as the real presence of equal opportunities in accessing
ethical privacy issues. Moreover, the communication from one device to another will influence
people’s lives in ways which are hard to imagine as long as there will not be a coherent, legal and
democratic frame to appropriately describe the limits of personal data.
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In conclusion, the impact of smart, Internet-connected products is just now being understood.
Smart products offer new functionality, greater reliability, and more intense use of products while
providing detailed information that can be used to improve both the products and the customer
experience. (Laudon and Laudon, 2017, p. 129).