Recall effectiveness, strategy, and task complexity in the U.S. meat and poultry industry

An increasing emphasis on social responsibility from consumers, media, and government agencies has expanded the discourse around product recalls from what can be done to prevent a product recall to also include what can be done to make a product recall more effective to reduce harm to consumers. Surprisingly, little research has addressed the latter, leaving a gap in our understanding, while a substantive body of research has investigated the former. As a result of this gap, managers face a dilemma regarding what recall strategy to adopt in order to conduct an effective recall and reduce harm to consumers. To address this dilemma, we empirically examine how recall strategy affects two measures of recall effectiveness, recall completion time and recalled product recovered, using secondary data from recalls regulated by the United States Department of Agriculture from 2005 to 2015. We further investigate how the difficulty or complexity associated with the recall task may moderate the relationship between recall strategies and recall effectiveness. Our results provide managers with actionable guidance regarding the influence of different recall strategies, and indicate that the effect of recall strategy on performance may depend on the complexity of the recall recovery task.