Whole Foods Crisis Summary

620 Words2 Pages

In 2015 Whole Foods grocery store chain was found to have been overpricing prepackaged food products according to an investigation by consumer affairs (Isidore, 2015). The overcharging ranged from eighty cents to over fourteen dollars per package on various products found within the New York City store. In 2014 three other stores in California were found to have violated the same type of pricing regulations by overpricing packaged food items. The corporation was fined almost eight hundred thousand dollars by the state following the investigation.

The CEO of Whole Foods released a statement acknowledging the pricing discrepancies within a week of the report (Masunaga, 2015). In the statement he vowed to provide better training to the employees …show more content…

The efforts made did not appear to repair the damage as much they expected to as the stoke prices and revenue were still down a year following the situation (Gillespie, 2016). The management of the crisis did appear to follow the guidelines set forth in crisis management, the response was swift, the instance was acknowledged, efforts were made to correct future occurrences, and there was focus on the customer and the employees of the store (Crandall et. al., 2014). The success of the recovery does not appear to have been a well as the successful recovery of Taco Bell in this …show more content…

The company accepted full responsibility for the stranded customers as well as made swift changes to ensure the breakdown would never occur again. There were public statements made acknowledging the issues and the blame was not passed. The case was successful because the company began quickly making corrections when they were made aware of the crisis, they worked with customers to compensate them for the inconvenience, they publicly accepted responsibility and they made the necessary changes to prevent further instances of that nature from occurring (Crandall et. al., 2014). This company made a successful recovery following the crisis as Taco Bell did.

References

Bailey, J. (2007). JetBlue’s C.E.O. is ‘mortified’ after fliers are stranded. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/19/business/19jetblue.html?module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Business%20Day&action=keypress&region=FixedLeft&pgtype=article.

Crandall, W. R., Parnell, J. A., & Spillan, J. E. (2014). Crisis management leading in the new strategy landscape (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: SAGE.

Gillespie, P. (2016). Whole Foods struggles to get back on its feet. Retrieved from

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