PART I: The Case

Product recalls have become increasingly commonplace. In fact, American media reports often contain information concerning product recalls of everything from food products to toys and cars. These recalls are also increasing in global frequency in recent years. Potentially unsafe consumer goods could lead to a large-scale product-harm crises incident, and Toyota experienced this when there were problems with some of their vehicles having uncommanded acceleration inputs. Moreover, Toyota witnessed firsthand how portions of one crisis can spill over into several segments of an organization. Toyota’s leadership team dealt with a massive recall effort. This recall, among other recalls, is indicative of the importance of company safety strategies (Rajasekera, 2013). Although leaders hope to eliminate or at least minimize product-harm crises, they also need to know consumer expectations and stock market reactions to the emergency. Baolong, Lin, Gao, and Fei (2014), covered the effects of product-harm crises on consumer perceived value of the product, in which they provide a working definition of product-harm that included an organizations’ product being defective to the point of being dangerous to the consumer.

Despite Toyota’s historic brand reputation of quality and the trust consumers had in the Toyota products, the recall caused many to question how the company will remain competitive. Toyota’s leaders faced challenges because over 6 million vehicles were recalled for safety defects, requiring Toyota to rethink their strategies to regain their position in the automobile industry and avoid destroying their customers’ loyalty and stakeholders’ confidence in their products and return on investments.

Challenges to Toyota Caused by Recall Problems, Social Networks and Digitsation

PART II: Case Analysis and Write Up

You will examine Toyota’s real-life case and develop recommendations that would help Toyota’s global leaders recover their brand loyalty.

To prepare for this Case Study, read the case, “Challenges to Toyota Caused by Recall Problems, Social Networks, and Digitisation.”

Submit a scholarly analysis in which you do the following:

• Evaluate the definition of product-harm crisis within the context of the Toyota case study.

• Identify the problems the Toyota leaders must solve.

• Analyze the organizational changes that were successful and unsuccessful.

• Synthesize your analysis of the literature to develop one or more recommendations for strategies Toyota might use to manage this product-harm crisis and recover brand loyalty in the global market.

Things to Remember!

✓ Write a scholarly paper of 3-5 pages in length (not including title and reference pages).

✓ Use Times New Roman, 12-point font, double-spaced, with one-inch margins, with
APA-formatted (6
^th
ed.) in-text citations and references for all resources.

✓ Check and correct any spelling or grammatical errors in your document prior to submitting it for evaluation.

✓ Use
EC Library resources:

o
Online Writing Lab (OWL)

o
APA, MLA & More: Citing Sources

o
Copyright & Avoiding Plagiarism

Compose your work using a word processor (or other software as appropriate) and save it frequently to your computer. When you’re ready to submit your work, click Browse My Computer and find your file. Once you’ve located your file click Open and, if successful, the file name will appear under the Attached files heading. Scroll to the bottom of the page, click Submit and you’re done.

Please be aware that papers in this course may be reviewed by anti-plagiarism software. Please review the EC policies on Academic Honesty and Plagiarism.

This case study is due by the second Sunday of Module 4 (week 8 of 15).

This assignment addresses the following Module Outcomes:

• Apply Management or Leadership to problems arising in different situations at workplace. (CO#5 and 11)
• Apply Operations Management concepts to real-world situations. (CO#5 and 11)
• Apply concepts of Ethical Management to real-world situations. (CO#8 and 11)
• Analyze global business situations from a case analysis. (CO# 7)