Privacy Policy

Privacy Statement

Last updated 29th September 2021

Yakult UK Ltd. is sensitive to privacy issues surrounding use of customer information. Protection of privacy is extremely important to us. The instances in which Yakult does collect and use information are specifically described in this Privacy Statement and for which we took into account the principles of the EU General Data Protection Regulation.

This privacy statement describes how your personal data is processed by Yakult in connection with the services (“Services”) we provide to you. These Services include:

All our Yakult websites, and any other website operated by us.
Any (mobile) sites, applications, widgets, and other (mobile) interactive features; and
Other services that we may offer in connections with the two points mentioned above, such as rewards programs, through our official social media pages as well as through HTML-formatted email messages that we send to you.

This statement also describes the rights you have in respect of your personal data being collected and processed by Yakult. If you have any questions regarding this statement, you can contact us at the contact details included in this statement. Please read this statement carefully before you start using our Services.

Responsible party

The controller of the processing of your personal data (meaning the party that is responsible) is: Yakult UK Ltd. Registered Address at Anteros, Odyssey Business Park, West End Road, South Ruislip, HA4 6QQ. Yakult UK Ltd will be your point of contact for privacy and data protection matters.

Which personal data do we collect from you?

Depending on the Service, we may ask you to provide us with the following personal data:

Name, address
Telephone number
Email address
Date of birth
Consumption habits
Gender
Lifestyle routines (e.g., breakfast habits)
Postal code
Family composition
Hobbies/interest

We will derive the following personal data from your use of our Services (with your consent where required):

IP address
Personal characteristics, such as hobbies and interests, location
Online behaviour when you use our Services, e.g., whether or not you click on content or on items on Yakult emails / newsletters
Social media account ID (such as your Facebook username).
Type of your mobile device (computer, laptop, mobile)

How do we collect your personal data?

We collect personal data because you provide this data to us, for instance when you sign up for more information, news and events from Yakult or make a purchase. Certain information will be always required when you sign up, for instance the details we need to contact you, e.g., your email address and name (and country) or the information we need to verify that you are eligible to enter a contest. These mandatory fields are the minimal data we need from you to provide you with the requested service. We may ask you to provide other personal data voluntarily, such as gender, hobbies and activities that you like. Such personal data will usually be added to your profile.
When you interact on Facebook or other social media accounts, we will view your social account data that is visible to us.
We may also collect personal data from you offline, for instance when you call our contact customer service.
We may receive personal data from third parties. I.e., from people with whom you are friends or otherwise connected on social media platforms.

Why and how we use your personal data?

Below we describe why and how we process your personal data. Where we have other purposes of use of your personal data, we will inform you there of separately.

We use your personal data to provide you with our customer care services, including responding to your enquiries, comments and complaints and fulfilling your requests all with the objective of improving the service we provide. We protect your rights by the limiting the data we collect from you for this purpose and by limiting the retention period of this personal data.
We use your contact details to send administrative information to you, such as changes to this privacy statement.
We use your personal data to fulfil and take part in our promotions and contests, and to process prizes. We protect your rights by informing you of this use of your personal data and giving you the option of opting out at any time.
We use your personal data to manage your reservation for our factory visits or any other Yakult events, for example, to process your payments, to communicate with you regarding details of your reservation and provide you with related customer services.
With your consent, we use your personal data to inform you of Yakult’s products and Services (direct marketing), to provide you with tailored news, information updates and announcements via our marketing communications ,, to you send you information about promotions and to invite you to participate in our special programs or local events. As permitted by applicable law, will contact you by email, telephone, SMS, post or social media. We protect your rights by informing you of these activities in and by giving you the option to opt-out every time we communicate with you.
If you interact via social media, we will retrieve your social media profile data that is visible to us and aggregate this data to give us insight in our consumers.
We use your personal data for our business purposes, such as market research, enhancing our Services, determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns, tailoring our website experience and content based on your past activities on the websites. Where we can, we aggregate your details into anonymous data for these business purposes.

Information on profiling

In addition to the purposes of use as described in this paragraph we also use your personal data to build your profile. Where such information is available to us, your profile will consist of your gender, age, open rate and click through rate, topics clicked on, participation in an activity, type of activities participated in and other information that is provided by you to us via marketing communication or consumer research. We use this profile the better to inform you of our Yakult products and services, for instance by adjusting the website you view or the newsletter you receive, to your interests. If you do not wish us to build and use your profile, please contact us via marketing@yakult.co.uk or opt out using the unsubscribe on emails sent by us.

The cases where we give other parties access to your personal data

We may allow other parties access to your personal data including:

Our third-party service providers, such as our customer relationship management service provider, data processors, our market research service provider and other information technology service providers (e.g., our e-mailing service).
Third parties with whom we cooperate for our events, contests or other activities.

These transfers may include the transfer of personal data to other countries, including countries outside the European Economic Area which do not have a level of personal data protection similar to the EU. Yakult will ensure that these transfers are based on appropriate safeguards, including the use of EU Model Clauses, to ensure an adequate level of personal data protection. A copy of these safeguards can be requested via the contact details under ‘Your rights’.

We will not share your data with third parties unless there is a specific legitimate business reason for Yakult to instruct such third party to fulfil Yakult’s activities by using your data.

Retention periods

We will keep personal data we obtain in relation to your questions, complaints and enquiries, for 3 months after we fully address your question, complaint or enquiry, to ensure we have helped you sufficiently or in case you require more information or assistance. In exceptional circumstances, we will keep your name and e-mail address for 1 year after a complaint to address serious cases, fake or malicious complaints made. After these periods, we will delete your personal data as provided to us via the contact form, unless we are required by law to keep the personal data longer ([e.g., in case on complaints on food regulations]).
Unless you have consented to receive future news, events and information, we will keep personal data we obtained in relation to promotions, contests and reward programs, for the period of that activity and for 3 months thereafter to be able to address any questions or outstanding matters. After that we will delete your personal data related to that activity, except for any financial data on reimbursements, which we will store as long as required by applicable tax legislation.
Unless you have consented to receive future news, events and information, we will keep personal data we obtained in relation to online purchases for a period of 3 months since your last purchase, unless tax regulation requires us to keep the personal data longer. In those cases, we will keep the relevant personal data as long as required by applicable tax legislation.
If you have consented to receive future news, events and information we will keep your profile for 24 months since your last activity with us. We measure your last activity by assessing whether or not you opened our newsletters or other digital communication, what links you click on and whether or not you enrol in our promotion, or contests. Your data will be deleted if we asses there has been no activity from you for 24 months.

Your rights

You have the following rights with respect to your personal data:

You have the right to access your personal data as processed by Yakult. This means that Yakult will provide you with information such as the categories of personal data that are processed, the purposes of processing, retention periods and categories of third-party recipients, e.g., fulfilment centres, prize providers.
You also have the right to have your personal data rectified or erased as appropriate, the right to restrict the processing and the right to object to the processing ( I.e., correct, opt-out or unsubscribe).
You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Your withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of the processing of your personal data by Yakult based on consent before the withdrawal.
At your request, a copy of your personal data provided held by us will be provided to you in a common machine-readable format (data portability).

You can exercise your rights by contacting us via marketing@yakult.co.uk. Upon your request, we may ask for additional information from you to verify your identity, such as a photo ID or a utility bill (and make sure we do not violate any other person’s privacy) and to handle your request efficiently. All identity check documents will thereafter be disposed of securely.

You also have the right to file a complaint with your data protection supervisory authority.

Changes to this privacy statement

The website and services from Yakult may change from time to time. For this reason, Yakult may need to change or add information to this statement. Changes to our privacy statement, when they occur, will be clearly noted on our website, In case of substantial changes, we will inform you of our new privacy statement via the contact details we have from you.

Cookies and Similar Technologies

On the website we use cookies and similar technologies. More information on this can be found in our Cookie Policy Statement.

Contact Us

If you have any further questions, please contact us via marketing@yakult.co.uk

Disclaimer

This website is operated by Yakult UK Ltd. The information provided through this website is intended only for residents of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. No other person should rely or act upon any information contained in this website and information available is not relevant to any other countries or territories.