Recent Techniques in Educational Science
The Impact of Time on Product-Harm Crises in the Food Industry: The
Case of IKEA’s Meatballs
AIKATERINI VASSILIKOPOULOU1, PETER J. STAVROULAKIS2
1
Department of Marketing
Technological Educational Institute of Athens
Agiou Spyridonos, Aegaleo
GREECE
katva@aueb.gr
2
PETER J. STAVROULAKIS
Department of Agricultural Economics & Rural Development
Agricultural University of Athens
Iera Odos 75, Athens
GREECE
pjstav@gmail.com
Abstract: The current paper focuses on the recent crisis concerning the firm IKEA (meatball samples after
analysis were found to include horsemeat) and examines the impact of time on consumers’ impression of the
company, perceived danger, blame, perceived severity, anger and purchase intentions. Since previous studies
have demonstrated that time diminishes the negative effects of a product-harm crisis, the paper aims at
investigating the variations of the aforementioned variables in five different time periods after the crisis.
Results showed that consumers were quite reluctant towards eating at IKEA’s restaurant a few days after the
incident, but within the next ten weeks perceived danger had already been reduced and consumers felt that
eating meatballs at the restaurant was pretty safe. Although the company did not follow a high accommodative
crisis management strategy (i.e. issue an apology along with a straightforward explanation), it seems that
consumers “forget” after a certain period of time and their purchase behavior returns to its normal pattern.
Key-Words: Product-Harm Crises, Recalls, Crisis Management, IKEA Meatball Crisis
originating from process failure) and valuesrelated (originating from moral failure) we can
initially assign the hue of the IKEA meatball
crisis as performance-related, since it
superficially concerns a product defect.
As one may plainly observe from an
exploratory visit to any IKEA location, the
firm’s core principles, values and focus on
quality are being constantly communicated to
the public. Price reduction through economies
of scale, logistics innovations, total efficiency
and process optimization with priority on
product quality are the firm’s key selling points.
The IKEA vision is to create a better
everyday life for the many people (IKEA Group
Sustainability Strategy for 2020, p. 5) and the
firm’s self-description is as a “values-driven
business with a culture based on strong
values…our culture and values shape the way
1 Introduction
Pauchant and Mitroff [16] believe that a crisis
consists of a disruption that affects the entire
corporate system and threatens its basic
principles. Barton [1] agrees that a crisis is a
big and unexpected event, which is likely to
have negative effects. According to Lerbinger
[12], crises are events that have a negative
impact on corporate reputation and have
negative outcomes on the long-term goals of
profitability, growth and survival. Crises are
"abnormal situations" that present substantial
risk to the company and could have severe
consequences if the company does not properly
manage them [15, 19]. Product-harm crises are
incidents where a product is found to be unsafe
for consumers, defective or dangerous [6].
Following the types of brand crises [7]
as
performance-related
(product
defect
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Recent Techniques in Educational Science
we do business and create a powerful desire to
do the right thing”. A sustainability strategy
flows in synchronization with a firm that holds
such core values, because of the fact that
sustainability demands that a firm has such a
grasp on quality and value that it can promote
these principles today and in the future, for all
its stakeholders.
By extension, we could argue that this crisis
is a hybrid of the two types of brand crises since
it is explicitly of a performance-related nature
but implicit of a values-related crisis; since
there has to be a dynamic involution between
the practical value-system of a firm and the
apparent effectiveness of said system.
A values-related crisis does not directly
involve the product but involves social or
ethical issues surrounding the values espoused
by the brand [7]. The failure of a process
concerning a firm in reference to a broadranged value culture that stands as a proponent
of its processes supports the duality claim of
this particular crisis.
levels, i.e. low accommodative strategies
(denial), moderating accommodating strategies
(simply accept or/and excuse) and high
accommodative strategies (super effort). Super
effort includes (among other actions) a full
apology, great concern for consumer welfare
and compensation [21].
After the crisis went public on February
25th, IKEA voluntarily recalled all meatball
products in Greece and through a press release
informed its customers that further details on
the horsemeat would be given after the
completion of the necessary investigation. As a
result, it may be concluded that the company
did not adopt a highly accommodative strategy
and a single action was taken almost a month
after the information about horsemeat in
meatballs surfaced through the Media. Based on
the above assumptions, the paper attempts to
investigate consumers’ responses towards
IKEA and the potentially tainted product across
five different time periods after the crisis.
3 Methodology
2 Problem Formulation
Most of the past research studies on crisis
management use imaginary scenarios [5, 8, 11,
14, 22, 23 and 28] as certain conditions would
be difficult or impossible to be measured in
actual crises. On top of that, Theofilou et al.
[25] demonstrated that imaginary scenarios’
results do not differ significantly from the
results of the studies based on real crises.
However, the use of hypothetical
scenarios has been criticized [2] for ignoring
important marketing variables, such as the
Media [6] and the inability of the respondent to
feel the actual experience of the crisis and
express actual feelings [13].
As the authors conjecture, the impact of
time as a variable could be more validly
measured through real cases. Because of this
factor, the survey was conducted right after the
Media revealed that horsemeat was detected in
IKEA’s meatballs in the Czech Republic and
controls had not yet been implemented for the
Greek market.
One hundred and twenty four
respondents participated in the survey.
Participants, who were randomly selected in
The literature on the impact of time on crisis
management is limited. Standop [24] found
that the time span between the first signals of
potential harm and the issue of the recall is
crucial and may influence the effectiveness of
crisis management strategies. Vassilikopoulou
et al. [27] demonstrated that consumers could
forget about a crisis approximately one year
after the incident. Nevertheless, their research
studies had two basic limitations: (a) it was
based on hypothetical crisis scenarios (i.e. a
fictitious company) and (b) there was a great
gap between the three periods of time that the
consumers’ reactions were measured (three
days, three months and one year after the
hypothetical crisis).
Crisis management literature reveals
that the organization’s response to a crisis may
significantly affect consumers’ attitudes,
perceptions and reactions [3, 17, 18 and 26].
More specifically, Shrivastava and Siomkos
[20] believe that organizational responses vary
from “denial” to “super effort”, while Coombs
[4] argues that there are three basic response
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
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three shopping malls of Athens, were given a
Newspaper article that described in detail the
event. After reading carefully the article, a
questionnaire was distributed. Regarding the
demographic characteristics of the sample,
approximately 41% of the participants were
men, and the greatest percentage (56%)
consisted of university/college graduates.
Almost 30% of the respondents were 18–25
years old. The questionnaire included the
questions below:
I have a good impression about IKEA (strongly
disagree / strongly agree) (source: [29])
How would you characterize the decision of
whether to buy meatballs from IKEA’s
restaurant? (significant opportunity / significant
risk) (source:[30])
I hold IKEA responsible for the product harm
(strongly disagree / strongly agree)
(source: [29])
I feel angry about the event (strongly disagree /
strongly agree)
(source: [32])
How severe was the event (1 = not at all severe
to 7 = very severe)
(source: [33])
I intend to buy meatballs from IKEA’s
restaurant in the future (strongly disagree /
strongly agree)
(source: [31])
I intend to buy furniture from IKEA in the
future (strongly disagree / strongly agree)
(source:[31])
3
days
after
1
week
after
6
weeks
after
Impression
3.45
4.67
4.66
4.89
5.01
Perceived
risk
Anger
4.91
4.20
4.13
3.87
3.65
5.09
4.32
4.22
3.75
3.73
Severity
4.88
4.52
4.44
4.29
3.95
Purchase
intentions
(meatballs)
2.54
3.68
4.16
4.54
4.69
Purchase
intentions
(furniture)
5.89
6.02
6.07
6.12
6.20
From the above results it is clear that time plays
an important role on consumer reactions during
product-harm crises and that the general
impression of the company gradually improves
over time. The difference between the first
measurement and the second one (i.e. 1 week
after) is notable. Similarly, the perceived risk,
anger and the responsibility of blame towards
the company diminish over time. Moreover,
participants believe that the meatballs are less
dangerous (perceived risk) as time passes.
Three days after the crisis, consumers declared
that would not easily eat IKEA’s meatballs in
the future (average=2.54).
However, this
statement seems to change over time and it is
quite impressive that 6 weeks after the incident
consumers are much more willing to eat said
meatballs (average=4.69).
It seems that the crisis has had
negligible effects on IKEA and that the
corporate brand was not much impacted by the
crisis. From the beginning (3 days after crisis)
consumers answered that they would visit
IKEA to buy furniture. Thus, it is obvious that
consumers after the detection of the defected
product continue to trust IKEA for buying home
All items were formulated in 7-point Likerttype scale format.
4 Results
Table 1 presents the mean scores for the seven
items investigated in the current research study
at the five different temporal points.
Table 1: Mean Scores in five different time
points.
ISBN: 978-1-61804-187-6
Mean Scores
2
4
weeks weeks
after
after
Item
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equipment, although their attitudes towards
IKEA’s
restaurant
did
present
some
differentiation (at least in the beginning).
Figures 1,2 and 3 graphically present the
temporal volatility of the examined variables.
Fig. 1: The Volatility of Perceived Risk and
Impression
be evaluated more favorably [4, 10] might pose
as a sufficient stronghold of security for a firm,
so much so that the market can be flooded with
advertisements concerning the (price-reduced)
comeback of a once tainted product just seven
weeks after the crisis first went public. This is a
very interesting development if we take under
consideration that: 1) the level of explanation
for the crisis was low and cannot be considered
substantial, 2) said response does not even
imply prevention of the crisis and 3) there is no
evident correlation between the value-system of
the firm and the response strategy. Still it
would seem that the crisis has been mitigated
by an absent (in terms of active volition) firm
following a pause/proceed with caution plan.
In addition, this crisis provides the
opportunity to research the correlation between
the brand in crisis and other product line(s) of a
firm, how the crisis may or may not affect the
firm as a whole and whether this fact might
pose as a crisis planning tactic in order to shield
collateral product lines. Diffusing from product
cannibalism might pose as an efficient strategy
for the firm that does not see product
cannibalism as a practical methodology and an
asset for internal antagonism but as a threat to
steer away from; at the same time this diffusive
strategy may very well act as a product line
insulator during a product-harm crisis. Distinct
product lines and diversification may serve as a
salvage vessel of brand equity in time of dire
need.
This study focused on IKEA’s recent
crisis and measured consumers’ responses in
five different periods of time. The last survey
was conducted 6 weeks after the crisis (a few
days before this paper was written). It would be
interesting to take more measurements (e.g. up
to 6 months after the event or beyond).
Moreover, a couple of weeks after the
horsemeat detection, some chocolate tarts of
IKEA were found to contain sewage bacteria. It
would be interesting to compare those two
crises to find out whether the second one
provokes more negative reactions. Finally,
further research could empirically test an
equation model involving the full scales of the
investigate measurements and examine the
impact of time through growth curves.
Fig. 2: The Volatility of Anger, Severity and
Blame
Fig. 3: The Volatility of Purchase Intentions
5 Conclusions
It may take people years to forgive and forget
negative experiences deriving from a crisis and
for them to form more positive perceptions [9]
in regard to the firm, but in this instance we
observe that a bland general statement offering
no explanation surrounding the crisis that could
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