PRIVACY

Consumer privacy is of great importance to retailers whose business models are based upon the relationship built and maintained with customers. RILA believes that a self-regulatory approach is the most effective framework for privacy protection. Onerous regulations that apply a one-size-fits-all approach to privacy would be disruptive to retailers and consumers.

RILA members are committed to advancements in consumer privacy. Retailers promote consumer privacy throughout their organizations and at every stage of the development of their products and services. They also provide clear consumer choices, and adhere to transparency and privacy by design principles.

To meet higher expectations, many retailers are now converging brick-and-mortar outlets, eCommerce sites, social media sites and mobile applications to deliver a single, unified marketplace. Further, retailers must develop top-flight experiences with sophisticated programs. These experiences may include loyalty and rewards programs, discount cards, receipt messaging, personalized messaging (in offline, online and mobile contexts), receipt-less returns,

 express checkout, and no-line and no-wait purchases. Now more than ever, consumers demand concierge-like services, which can require personalization.

The prominence of the retail sector in the U.S. economy cannot be overstated. Improperly conceived privacy regulations have the potential to unduly hamper the consumer experience, stifle innovation, and make business practices too inflexible for customers--with little additional privacy protection in return.

Therefore, RILA believes that as a regulatory matter, privacy should be viewed with less emphasis on academic theories and more emphasis on what is practicable for consumers and proportional to consumer interests. This approach is, in fact, pro-consumer and should be embraced.

 

2013 OBJECTIVE

RILA will promote self-regulatory models and ensure that any new government standards are flexible enough to allow adaptation to ever changing technological advances and consumer wants and needs.