CRITICAL EVALUATION

Critical Evaluation

Critical Evaluation

In the Information Age the effective acquisition, development, and use of “knowledge assets” is said to be the key to securing competitive advantage, and the application of information technologies is of increasing organisational significance. Customer information systems and related database storage and processing capacities are hailed as an important new competitive weapon. The effects of any social technology are always determined by its uses, roles, intersection with other processes and practices, and resistances that arise as a consequence of its use. The importance placed upon the acquisition and use of customer information is a significant aspect of the so-called 'customer revolution' that was reflected in many organisations during the 1980s. “Getting to know the customer” became a catchcry, and advanced database storage and processing capacities were applied in the collection and use of unprecedented amounts of personal data about customers. The use of customer information is said to allow corporations to get closer to their customers, to the point where the relationship between an organisation and its customers has been described as one of “intimacy”. This paper examines the contemporary use of customer information systems in an organisational and social context. Technologies and practices associated with customer information systems—notably, customer accounting and marketing—are incorporated into the analysis in order to gain a holistic understanding of the processes involved and the consequences thereof. The organisation of the paper is as follows. The second section (next) introduces the rise of a corporate culture that is ostensibly centred on the needs of the customer. In the third section, the importance of customer information to the customer- centred strategy is examined, and the associated practices of marketing, customer segmentation, and customer accounting are introduced. The fourth section outlines the main ethical and social considerations pertaining to the interrelated use of customer information systems, accounting, and marketing. These include privacy concerns and, more significantly, organisational transformation which takes in a reconstruction of the customer and a dramatically changed organisational view of the customer. The fifth section sets out to expand on the conventional consideration of privacy issues by examining how the use of customer information systems and associated practices has a direct impact on issues of access, equity, alienation and social exclusion. The paper concludes in the final section by reflecting on the need for the information systems profession to consider its domain in context, and to consciously strive for ...