Case Studies:
Product Recalls

Representative Clients

• Consumer Product Safety Commission
• Fulbright & Jaworski
• General Electric
• Riddell Williams
• Stevens & Lee

Recall Effectiveness Research

eiden Associates has worked with many companies facing consumer product recalls to develop outreach programs that provide effective—and cost-effective—notification to owners of the affected units. Sometimes the recall participation rates we estimate for these programs are relatively low, because it has become increasingly difficult to capture the attention of busy consumers and motivate them to respond to a program that, in many cases, addresses relatively remote hazards.

Concern about the low effectiveness rates achieved by many programs prompted the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to undertake a series of steps to understand and, if possible, the factors limiting response rates. Heiden Associates and its partners, XL Associates and Independent Safety Consulting, were awarded a contract to search and review of literature available in a wide number of academic disciplines that provide insights on consumer motivation and behavior issues relevant to product recalls. Our research carried us into the fields of advertising, cognitive psychology, communication theory and media studies, consumer motivation and compliance, human factors and design research, marketing, recall management, risk perception, and social psychology.

Heiden Associates found that the path from recall notification to consumer response is fraught with a number of obstacles, each of which causes some of the potentially affected product owners to drop out of the pool of potential recall participants. For some the recall notification does not stand out from the clutter of other safety-related (and more general) product information or does not escape the initial filtering process that humans use to reduce the information inflow to a manageable level. For others the message may not be readily comprehended or may be in a form that does not facilitate its chances of being retained and remembered later. Both consumer risk perceptions of the seriousness of the hazard being addressed and their tolerance or “acceptance” of these risks depend on many factors, many of which are beyond the ability of the recalling company to influence in its recall notification effort.

CPSC also sponsored a series of public meetings on various issued relating to recall effectiveness. Heiden Associates looks forward to working with the Commission and other interested parties to improve the level of participation in public safety campaigns.

Wheelbarrow Recall Outreach Program

eiden Associates is often asked by companies and by counsel for both plaintiffs and defendants in product liability actions to evaluate the effectiveness achieved by a recall and to determine if additional consumer notification efforts are likely to yield a significant increase in the level of program participation. The answers we provide depend on the characteristics of the product and its distribution profile, the length of time the affected units have been in the hands of consumers, the notification techniques utilized, and other factors. We have analyzed recall issues involving nearly every major category of consumer product, including juvenile products, toys and recreational equipment, consumer electronics, lawn and garden equipment, power tools, major appliances, heating and air conditioning equipment, small kitchen appliances, and home furnishings.

Recall participation rates are often very low, and in many instances, further notification efforts are not likely to reach a significant number of additional consumers and motivate them to respond. However, some companies are interested in taking extra steps to ensure that the maximum number of affected users have been notified and have a chance to participate. One such company, Ames True Temper (ATT), a leading manufacturer of home and garden maintenance products, retained us to develop a second-round outreach effort for a wheelbarrow recall program that had achieved a very modest level of response to-date.

Applying the principles identified in our recent CPSC-sponsored research, Heiden Associates designed and implemented a new program outreach effort focusing on gardening-specific media channels. We developed and produced mailings to selected lists of newspaper editors and writers, magazine editors and columnists, and webmasters, which resulted in more effective coverage of the program in gardening-related forums. This outreach effort was supplemented with paid magazine advertising in special-interest publications that we identified as having the best reach (in terms of potentially affected product owners), as well as Internet advertising on gardening-related websites.

Coupled with an expanded and improved retailer communications plan and ATT's offer of a free gardening tool gift to those who responded, this second-round outreach has already achieved a higher participation rate than the initial recall-a dramatic result considering that response rates for second-round recall efforts are almost always less than half of those already achieved before the new outreach is launched.