Kudler Fine Food’s Frequent Shopper Program

Kudler Fine Food’s Frequent Shopper Program
Steve Engelhart
BSA 310
July 29, 2010
Caleb Green

Kudler Fine Food’s Frequent Shopper Program
When customers go into their local grocery store, they will undoubtedly be invited to participate in some sort of shopper-benefit program.   Some of these programs will give the consumer discounts on different items or allows them to accrue points that can be redeemed for discounts on other products offered.   Kudler Find Foods is considering implementing an online Frequent Shopper Program that will rewards its customers with deals and discounts on many of their products.   A Frequent Shopper program can go a long way to building customer loyalty and attract new business.   Before investing in such a program, Kudler needs to spend some time and resources investigating what it will take to implement this new feature.   This paper will discuss several areas that Kudler Fine Foods needs to investigate, including the legality of such a program, security risks, and financial benefits before any investments are made in creating a Frequent Shopper Program.
Before implementing an online Frequent Shopper Program, some investigation into the legality of this venture needs to be explored.   Many online retailers have invested time and resources into similar programs and will defend their intellectual property related to a service such as this.   For instance Amazon has patent 5960411 which describes, "A method and system for placing an order to purchase an item via the Internet" (Bezos, 2007).   What is interesting is that Open Market, Inc. has a similar patent, 5715314, in this area covering "A network-based sales system includes at least one buyer computer for operation by a user desiring to buy a product, at least one merchant computer, and at least one payment computer" (Payne, 2002).   What these patents are basically saying is that any online store is infringing either on Amazon or Open Market's patents.   So either Amazon or Open...