Question

When Should a Company Order a Product Recall?

Facts: Walter Jones was feeding his five month-old daughter Millie plums from a jar of Winkler baby food when she suddenly began to choke on a piece of aluminum foil that had come from the jar. Walter rushed her to the hospital, where more foil was found in her stomach. Although the amount of aluminum found was not in itself deadly, Millie was nauseous for several hours, and her parents had trouble getting her to eat for many days thereafter. Walter sued Winkler. A number of similar incidents involving Winkler products had occurred at about the same time. Although the incidents covered a wide geographic area, their total number was not great, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decided not to require a recall of the baby food. Winkler faced two choices: (1) to do nothing and settle the cases as they arose or (2) to recall all jars of the same lot to protect other children from the possibility of ingesting foreign substances.

Social, Policy and Ethical Considerations

(1) What are the social and ethical issues Winkler must consider in choosing its course of action? Should the fact that none of the incidents had been fatal affect the company's decision? What should Winkler do in this situation?

(2) Would the first option be good for business? Who eventually bears the cost of the lawsuits or recalls? Who should bear the cost?

(3) What actions should be taken by the baby's parents? Do they have any social responsibility in this case to seek publicity sufficient to warn others?

Answer 1

1) Winkler faces an ethical & social issue about whether they should take the responsibility of their product and thus the responsibility of the incidents occurring at the various geographic locations. Wrinkler has to to carefully adjudge their action because of the sensitivity of their product. With their products catering to the infant age group, they are expected to be much more responsible in their product and hence, not taking responsibility of these incidents would affect their branding to a great extent.

Eventhough Wrinkler has received a lot of respite because of the non-fatal behavior of these incidents and also from the FDA judgement, but their decision shouldn't be based upon these facts. Due to these incidents, their products' acceptability would surely take a hit. There is an unstated mandate given to the Wrinkler, to take an appropriate action and hence assuring its customers about the quality of its products. Thus, biasing decisions on the above mentioned facts would be suicidal for Wrinkler.

Wrinkler should possible opt for the second option and thus, recall all the jar of the lots in question. They should frame their decision in such a way that it should come out that the decision is being taken not with the guilt of having produced defective product but because of their customer centric approach.

2) First option would not be healthy for the Winkler's business as it would imply that the firm refrains from taking responsibility of its product and is least concerned about the well-being of its customers. This poor branding would deeply hurt its brand positioning and thus, would can cause irreparable damage to its brand in the long run.

Presently, the customers shall be bearing the cost of lawsuits but morally, Wrinkler should bear these costs. This would present their brand as 'ready to go an extra mile' in front of their customers.

3) Baby' parent should request the competent authorities to make a quality audit of the production process at Winkler and thus, making sure that appropriate quality measures are instilled there so as to avoid reoccurrence of such issues in future. Plus, considering the normal tendency of the customers, they should possibly switch to a competitive brand for some time.

Yes, it is the social responsibility of the parents to publicize the incident and thus making their peer customers aware about the possible quality issue in Winkler's product. By attracting appropriate momentum in their cause, they might possibly force Winkler to owe up to the situation and thus, take necessary steps in this regard.

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