Reference no: EM133046401

You are the IT/IS department head, the CIO, for a large national retailer, BuyHereCo. Your industry continues to lose ground to both Amazon and Walmart, who can deliver the goods directly to your customers. The CEO of BuyHereCo has proposed a new app for your customers' phones which will compete with, mimic and copy the Amazon and Walmart apps on cell phones. This is an exciting new direction for BuyHereCo, and everyone inside the company is excited. In a meeting with just a few executives of the firm, the CEO says that she knows a software firm that can slide some software inside your company's new app that will report back to BuyHereCo without the customer knowing. These reports from customers' phones will actually bring data from your competitors' applications, showing you what they are doing while they are buying from other sellers and using other sellers' apps. The Legal department will insert a couple of lines in the Terms of Service and End User License Agreement about your app sending "information about shopping habits" which will "not be shared with other firms" in order to give BuyHereCo some legal protection.

What do you do as the CIO in this situation? Why is that your answer? What did you rely on to get to that answer? What was the process in making your decision? Do you feel very strongly about your actions, or is this nothing to get upset about? The "why" is more important than the "what" of the question; make sure you can defend your stand. 1000 words.