Study on the image restoration strategy and effect of corporates in crisis situations based on text mining

Abstract

A corporate's reputation may be significantly impacted by how it handles emergencies. To investigate the effect of different coping strategies on corporate image restoration, we collected 47 representative events of corporates in different industries as well as relevant comments from Weibo. Based on the image restoration theory proposed by Benoit, the effects of different strategies on corporate reputation restoration were analyzed by using sentiment analysis and the topic model. We found that the two strategies of corrective action and mortification can usually better alleviate the negative emotions of the public. On the contrary, if corporates respond with strategies of denial, evading responsibility, or reducing offensiveness, there could be strong feelings of dissatisfaction. The case study of the food industry also finds that even if the effect of alleviating the negative emotions of the public is not significant, an appropriate response could shift the attention of some consumers and to some extent serve the purpose of restoring the corporate reputation.