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This study aims to investigate the effects of firm characteristics and crisis characteristics on remedies offered to consumers by firms in the event of a product recall crisis.

Published data on 868 product recalls in the US toy industry from 1988 to 2011 have been used to investigate the effects of firm experience in product recalls, type of firm (company versus intermediary) and product recall severity in predicting remedies offered to consumers in the event of a product recall.

The findings show that firm recall experience, firm type and recall severity are negatively associated with recall remedies offered. Specifically, firms offer lower remedies if they have higher recall experience, if they are upstream firms in the supply chain (farther from consumers) and if the recall is more severe.

This study focuses on the toy industry and does not consider product complexity, firm reputation and the role of external regulatory agencies in the prediction of remedies offered by firms. Future research may extend this study to include the above factors.

Offering a high remedy to consumers of a recalled product may be a responsible decision by a firm, but it may also attract shareholder wrath. The study has implications for managing multiple goals in product recall crisis management.

Studies focused on issues of interest to consumers during a recall crisis, such as swift recalls and appropriate remedies, are limited. This study contributes to the understanding of the antecedents of recall remedies.

Although there have been many discussions on the status and development of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), theory on how they survive is minimal. Little is known about how OEMs survive and upgrade to other business models, such as original design manufacturers (ODMs) and original brand manufacturers (OBMs), in emerging economies. The purpose of this paper is to extend the theory on the survival path of OEMs from the perspective of emerging countries by examining how OEMs survive cost pressures and upgrade to ODMs or OBMs.

Using a multi-case study method, this study analyzes the survival path employed by OEMs by examining eight firms in the Chinese toy industry.

This study shows that OEMs remain weak in the global toy industry chain due to labor costs. While some OEMs move to low-cost regions, others turn to OBM management, after transitioning through an ODM model, by investing in research and development and marketing.

This study explores the survival paths of OEM enterprises, showing that OEMs can first upgrade to ODMs and then to OBMs, or they can directly upgrade to OBMs. Shifting from OEM to ODM is an important step in the transition process, although the contract that OEMs have with their foreign partners does not change significantly.

This paper aims to understand why firms expedite or delay product recall decisions involving international sourcing.

This paper combines US toy recall data from the Consumer Products Safety Commission database for the period from 1988to 2011 with World Economic Forum data on institutional environments to predict the effect the host country conditions have on recall timing decisions.

Firms tend to expedite decisions to recall defective products sourced from countries where the informal institutional profile is perceived to be unfavorable for quality manufacture.

The reported research is empirical in nature and uses pooled cross-country, single-industry data.

Managers should be careful not to allow their biases to affect their product recall timing decisions.

Whereas previous research has examined recall timing decisions, this study is the first to consider the institutional environment where products are sourced from as an explanatory variable.

The purpose of this paper is to examine product failures in the consumer technology products industry to explain why some firms experience more aesthetic-related failures than others.

The study uses a unique data set of failed high technology consumer products identified by expert product reviewers of 75 online magazines during 2000-2010. The variables are constructed using two coders as well as using an automated content analysis process based on the information provided in the online product reviews. The study tests a hypothesis using multilevel logistic regression techniques on a sample of 606 product reviews of 323 products associated with 171 firms.

The study demonstrates that older firms are much more susceptible than younger firms to suffer from aesthetic-related product failures when they pursue product innovations that are new for them. Likewise, older firms suffer fewer aesthetics-related product failures than younger firms when they exploit products that well known to them.

The study is highly novel in its research setting and empirical approach, and brings valuable insights for researchers and managers regarding challenges associated with aesthetic innovations for young and old firms.