Page 223 - Toyota Under Fire

TOYOT A UNDER FIRE

overwhelmingly negative applied to statements like: “Toyota appro-
priately handled issues with the brake-pedal recall; this incident is an
outlier; Toyota typically has a strong reputation for quality; and the
recall shows Toyota’s commitment to customer safety.” A separate
study undertaken by BizPulse at about the same time confirmed
these findings.* The same results also showed up in Edmunds.com’s
data, which showed that people who had owned a Toyota in the
past continued to consider Toyota vehicles at the same level as they
had before the recalls. One interesting and counterintuitive find-
ing was that Toyota owners whose cars had been recalled actually
reported higher satisfaction and were more likely to buy another
Toyota than those whose cars had not been recalled—suggesting
that the heroic efforts of Toyota and its dealers had paid off.
Various indicators of sales in Figure 4.3 show a similar pat-
tern of a rapid and impressive recovery, but not fully back to the

FIGURE 4.3 TOYOTA U.S. SALES EXPERIENCE
OVER TIME THROUGH THE RECALL CRISIS
19.0%
18.0%
17.0%
16.0%
15.0%
14.0%
13.0%
12.0%
11.0%
10.0%
Jan-08 Mar-08 May-08 Jul-08 Sep-08 Nov-08 Jan-09 Mar-09 May-09 Jul-09 Sep-09 Nov-09 Jan-10 Mar-10 May-10 Jul-10 Sep-10 Nov-10 Dec-10

Toyota U.S. Market Share, 2008–2010
* Christine Hall, “BizPulse Results Mimics Rice University Toyota Study,”
Houston Business Journal, March 9, 2010; http://www.bizjournals.com/hous
ton/stories/2010/03/08/daily19.html #ixzz0vTUTWr5u.

192