Reflection on the Presented Case Study on Samsung’s Recent Product Safety Issues

Justin Francis L. Busran                                                                MBM-1

Reflection on the Presented Case Study on Samsung’s Recent Product Safety Issues

Summary:

Samsung is one of the leading manufacturers of consumer electronics and appliances. The South Korean company embraces top-of-the-line innovations and high-quality standards. Samsung has made known to the world that their products are beyond expectations of the consumers.

In the year 2016, Samsung has faced major issue in product safety. The recent issue on battery explosion of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 broke out on September. Later, another battery explosion issue was discovered from one of its high-tier product, the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. And then on October, apart from its consumer electronic products, an explosion issue was also discovered from one of its home appliance products, the Samsung Top Load Washer. With these events, an issue in Samsung’s Corporate Social Responsibility in connection to Consumer Product Safety has been raised in the consumer community.

Experience:

                As a techie person, I have also experienced pitfalls of product quality on different gadgets and consumer electronic products. On my first acquisition of a netbook from ASUS, I have discovered product failure and it also turned out that it is also a product safety issue. My netbook or laptop has a minor defect in its LCD screen. It affected my vision when I use my netbook. I consulted the technical support of ASUS via online but the feedback did not help. At the end, ASUS advised that my netbook be shipped to their factory in Taiwan but I declined to ship my product. Nevertheless, ASUS showed a solid action in consumer support. But it did not solve product safety since the defective LCD screen of my netbook has not been addressed and it continued to be a distraction on my vision when I use the product.

Reaction:

                I find the case of Samsung as a good example of a company neglecting standards in product safety as an expense due to pushing up too much in innovation. Tech companies today experience a very stiff competition in terms of creativity and innovation and therefore the avoidance of consumer product safety quality failures has also lowered. The higher is the level of innovation, the higher the risk in consumer product safety and quality.

Action:

                A tech company’s product manufacturing should be balanced. Of course, a tech company should foster innovation and creativity but it should never compromise product safety resulting to a glitch in its Corporate Social Responsibility. A tech company should implement management styles that equilibrium innovation and consumer product safety. As a consumer, a helpful action would be to inspect first the product manual especially in the product safety portion to protect myself. I could also share product safety information to the consumer community via the social media or other portals in the Internet. In this way, many consumers would benefit on the product safety information and could protect them. The information-sharing action or information drive could also alert the company under issue and would enable the company to deliver proper consumer product safety support to the affected community of consumers.