The Power of the Automotive Community

 This post is about how much power people truly have over the auto industry. Think about it, people literally are the industry, so if a large enough amount boycotts a company it can cause bankruptcy within weeks. People can refuse to buy from a company for safety reasons, public alignments, or because they lose trust in their brand. one company that has had repeated cases over unsafe is General Motors (GM). they've had issues with faulty ignition switches in 2014, they were sued for dangerous airbag chemicals in 2008 (Dolan | Dobrinsky). These cases drew huge settlements, with the faulty ignition switches settling at $400 million dollars, and the airbag case settling at $28 billion dollars. Both cases drew millions of people that filed cases. This is partly due to social media and more people being bale to connect and hear about the cases. That is the power of the internet, to spread information easily, quickly to mass amounts of people. 

(Accounting Today. GM to pay $1 million to settle accounting charges over ignition switch defects. Jan. 2017. Accounting Today, Arizent, accountingtoday.com/news/gm-to-pay-1-million-to-settle-accounting-charges-over-ignition-switch-defects. Accessed 20 Dec. 2020. )

    Had these cases happened pre internet, they would have drawn less people, the news of how widespread and dangerous these issues were would not have reached nearly the same amount of people. Majority of the biggest auto recalls have happened in the last decade. Isn't it weird that the last decade has held some of the biggest recalls,  internet has continued to peak and get more and more widespread? I don't think so. I believe that it is not coincidence that this has happened. With how widespread the internet has become, due to this people are even more invested into the internet. Now news companies will run almost any story in hopes to be the first. So an event could happen and a story could be written within the hour. That is the best thing about the internet it gets news out quickly to a complex web of connections and people.


Works Cited

Dolan | Dobrinsky | Rosenblum | Bluestein, LLP, editor. "Major Product Liability
     Cases in the U.S." Dolan Dobrinsky Rosenblum Bluestein, LLP, edited by 2020
     Dolan Dobrinsky Rosenblum Bluestein, LLP, DDRB, 12 Dec. 29, ddrlawyers.com/
     blog/major-product-liability-cases-u-s/. Accessed 18 Dec. 2020.
Accounting Today. GM to pay $1 million to settle accounting charges over
     ignition switch defects. Jan. 2017. Accounting Today, Arizent,
     accountingtoday.com/news/
     gm-to-pay-1-million-to-settle-accounting-charges-over-ignition-switch-defects.
     Accessed 20 Dec. 2020.

Comments

  1. AnonymousJanuary 12, 2021 at 12:24 AM

    this was a very interesting blog, are there ways that the automotive can prevent the boycotting even if there are potential issues in there models?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ms. LaClairJanuary 17, 2021 at 5:23 PM

    Do you think people have this much power when the auto company hasn't done something wrong? Like if enough people boycotted a company because they wanted it to be more environmentally friendly, for example, do you think that would work?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousJanuary 19, 2021 at 5:35 PM

      I truly do think that if enough people boycotted a company for any reasons that it could lead that company to changing completely or try and appease or broker something to get them to stop boycotting. It all depends what company, how many boycotters, and why they're boycotting.

      Delete

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