Japanese Autombile company Toyota Motor Corporation has recalled over 690’000 Tacoma pickup trucks in the US due to potential danger. Although currently there have been no accidents, over 1.69 million cars are expected to be thoroughly examined over the next while to ensure safety among it’s consumers. A small quantity of the cars under inspection date back to models of 2005-2006. Previously, in 2009-2010, over 10 million Corollas were recalled due to the same fault, a surge in the engine causing random accelerations.
What the largest damage to Toyotas brand image has been, relating to this incident, is the customer service they have provided following complaints. Many customers have been told that their driving skills are not on point, rather than admit to a fault in design. Although they have now realized their negligence to the issue and recalled multiple cars solving the problem with the acceleration, they now have a much larger and potentially more costly problem; the damage to their image.
The first thing that a future car owner will consider imperative is the safety of the vehicle itself. Once this criteria has been satisfied style, speed, engine quality, etc will become an issue. As Toyota has proven unsafe regarding it’s acceleration, consumers may be reluctant to purchase such a car. This would obviously cause a decrease in sales, revenue and thus profit for the business as well as potentially causing a decline in market share.
Overall, Toyota must seriously consider a strategy to keep customers enticed with their brand, as well as fix the acceleration problem to ensure this does not occur for a third time.