Toyota recall- the cost of being unprepared in reputation management

Toyota recall issues are far from over as reports of snags and problems still trickle in. When the US government sought a staggering $16,375,000 as penalty from Toyota for its delayed response in notifying the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regarding the defective
accelerator pedals, the world class car maker chose to pay up readily. Was it in a way admitting its mistakes?.

As Chris Woodyard of USA TODAY wrote in "Toyota PR blitz plays catch-up after storm of problems," apologizing to customers "may be whistling in the wind as more reports of problem vehicles surface."

Did Toyota for a while misread the whole issue as an engineering problem rather than a reputation management problem, or is that a tried and tested crisis management was not place? It is too late now to analyze the probable causes for the debacle and now what Toyota should be doing is to formulate plans and policies to restore public trust and to protect its brand image as one of the favorite family cars yet again.

The public apology by the company president, Akio Toyoda, and the setting up of a task force headed by he himself has gone a long way in instilling confidence in the minds of millions of Toyota car owners. It succeeded in sending out message loud and clear that the company is is finally responding to the true nature of the problem. Toyota sat on the issue for pretty long and that cost it dearly. The problem snowballed into a full blown controversy because the company didn't try to rebuild the trust first as it was busy fixing the technical snags.

The recall without a full fledged reputation-management campaign to fall back on, proved ineffective in stalling the angry backlash and the plummeting share value of Toyota in the car market. Probably if a reputation management plan had come soon after the recall and the redress of the designs flaws, it would have landed Toyota on a safer ground!