Crisis Management at Toyota

Marketing is an organizational function that creates, communicates, captivates, and delivers value. It is also about building long-term relationships and trust with your customers. Toyota over the years has done an excellent job of marketing. They created some of the most reliable and safe cars at a price that most people could afford. Over the years they continued to build their reputation as a leader in safety and reliability. Customers could drive their vehicles for years and years. They would get tired of driving the vehicle before it wore out. Now Toyota has undone all that hard work at earning a reputation as a leader in the automobile industry. They have drawn in to question their reputation for building a safe and reliable vehicle. They have also drawn in to question their integrity as it has been reported that they knew about the safety problems long before the public found out about the problems. So now instead of marketing their product they are involved in crisis management. How do they make it up to their millions of valued customers. I believe that they are doing everything possible to make right with the customer by recalling vehicles in question and fixing the problem. In addition, they are making payments to their dealers who have lost millions of dollars because of this. I believe Toyota will eventually return and compete at the top. A company with excellent management will learn from their mistakes and not repeat the same mistake. Hopefully, other companies will also learn from Toyota's mistake.