Company Report #1: WhatsApp
Since 2010, WhatsApp has been one of the well-known instant messaging application for smartphones. In 2014, WhatsApp was owned by Facebook, which is a famous social media platform. The purpose of joining these two companies together is to ensure providing and developing better services to their users while continuing operating independently. According to the Wall Street Journal, WhatsApp is changing their privacy policy for the first time since joining Facebook. WhatsApp is planning on sharing data, especially phone numbers, with Facebook. The purpose of that is to show relevant business ads on Facebook that match the interests of the user while at the same time, ensuring that WhatsApp is being entirely private conforming …show more content…
However, WhatsApp appears ethical in their approach to the changes in the privacy policy. They issued a detailed blog post on their own website about the changes as well as being open to the public and the media about it. It is obvious that WhatsApp had developed their own code of ethics to govern the action of its managers in order to always remain ethical to their customers, discussed in chapter 1 page 16. Therefore, this action can contribute in perceiving WhatsApp as a responsible and morally guided business, which will help them in outperforming other messaging applications.
WhatsApp’s core values have always included knowing as little as possible about their customers. As discussed in chapter 2 page 31, the core values are the principles that govern the business conduct over time. This is interesting because by implementing the changes in their policy and sharing users’ data with Facebook, WhatsApp would be moving away from their core value. Consequently, customers may start losing trust and finding alternative messaging …show more content…
In other words, they are facing one of the uncontrollable environmental forces, which is the competitive force, discussed in chapter 3 pages 86-88. If the changes do not appeal to the users or if they felt that their data is not private anymore, they will easily switch to other providers due to the low switching costs. However, unlike other businesses, WhatsApp is giving its users the freedom to choose whether or not they want to share information on Facebook. Thus, because the changes are not forced, their marketing approach is unique. That is to say it stands as an opportunity for gaining customer loyalty as well as improving the bottom line of the
Since 2010, WhatsApp has been one of the well-known instant messaging application for smartphones. In 2014, WhatsApp was owned by Facebook, which is a famous social media platform. The purpose of joining these two companies together is to ensure providing and developing better services to their users while continuing operating independently. According to the Wall Street Journal, WhatsApp is changing their privacy policy for the first time since joining Facebook. WhatsApp is planning on sharing data, especially phone numbers, with Facebook. The purpose of that is to show relevant business ads on Facebook that match the interests of the user while at the same time, ensuring that WhatsApp is being entirely private conforming …show more content…
However, WhatsApp appears ethical in their approach to the changes in the privacy policy. They issued a detailed blog post on their own website about the changes as well as being open to the public and the media about it. It is obvious that WhatsApp had developed their own code of ethics to govern the action of its managers in order to always remain ethical to their customers, discussed in chapter 1 page 16. Therefore, this action can contribute in perceiving WhatsApp as a responsible and morally guided business, which will help them in outperforming other messaging applications.
WhatsApp’s core values have always included knowing as little as possible about their customers. As discussed in chapter 2 page 31, the core values are the principles that govern the business conduct over time. This is interesting because by implementing the changes in their policy and sharing users’ data with Facebook, WhatsApp would be moving away from their core value. Consequently, customers may start losing trust and finding alternative messaging …show more content…
In other words, they are facing one of the uncontrollable environmental forces, which is the competitive force, discussed in chapter 3 pages 86-88. If the changes do not appeal to the users or if they felt that their data is not private anymore, they will easily switch to other providers due to the low switching costs. However, unlike other businesses, WhatsApp is giving its users the freedom to choose whether or not they want to share information on Facebook. Thus, because the changes are not forced, their marketing approach is unique. That is to say it stands as an opportunity for gaining customer loyalty as well as improving the bottom line of the