The Public-opinion Guide And Crisis Management Strategy Of Corporations

In 2010, the crisis in public relations among foreign company, private company and state-owned company did not stop, such as advertising placement in Spring Festival Gala Evening, Toyota recall issue, Foxconn employee suicide issue, Bawang shampoo cancer issue, Sprite poisoning incident, and privacy battle between 360 and Tencent. The crisis involves product quality, labor disputes and all other related aspects, drawing high attention from government, media, business, the public. The high frequency and extensive influence of corporate crisis, and the high degree of public attention have shown a new phenomenon in corporate public relations in 2010.With the increasing competition among companies, enhanced market transparency, improving quality of the people, traditional businesses, who deal problems behind closed doors and simply focus on their own development practices, do not meet the needs of the times anymore. Whereas modern companies strive to not only build up good reputation of corporate social responsibility from a macro perspective, but also establish a positive brand image for society, environment and community service. More importantly, they are aware of that the only way to satisfy consumers is to respect their interests, impress the cognition of consumers, and comply the brand building with consumers' world view and consumption behavior.Furthermore, the public environment that companies are facing is more interactive and comprehensive rather than simplistic. Old companies simply output the concept through TV, newspaper, and radio. However, the age of single way transmission has already gone. The fourth media—internet is playing a more and more important role in the public opinion. As Fraser.P.Seitel said, "the vigorous development of the Internet and World Wide Web has made millions of people to become the real-time consumers with unrestricted communication."In the end of 2010, the scale of China's Internet users has reached four hundred and fifty-seven million, and the number of mobile phone users has achieved three hundred and three million, meaning that more and more people can react to the event and provide inclusive information and comments quickly. Accordingly, there is an irresolvable paradox referring that diversified perspectives not only help people to sort out the truth, but also make people confused. Moreover, the anonymity of the network and lacking of punishment mechanism give competitors and some malicious rumormongers an opportunity to exploit. Therefore, companies are dealing with increasing pressure of public opinion and higher difficulty and breadth of the public relations crisis.Public relations and crisis in public opinion research has expanded from the political field to the commercial areas overseas, entering into a mutual understanding stage between public and corporation. Nevertheless, this is still an emerging field in China. Imperfect development of market mechanism results in lacking of market awareness, perfect competition awareness, and knowledge of open and transparent development concept. Unfortunately, some companies still believe that there is only little chance of crisis, and that the best way to solve the problem is by giving out gifts, using connections and other human practices. Unlike the scientific approach, the former approach is often relatively simple, but contains high risk of legal liability. More importantly, it can harm the fairness of the market characteristics, and cause companies to fall into a passive situation by reflecting too slow to miss the best crisis resolving time.This article is a special subject study of crisis management and public opinion that designed for enterprises under the current media environment. It describes the reasons for crisis, the development process of crisis, and the strategies taken by companies. More specifically, the analysis integrates with specific case of Chinese enterprises crisis in 2010, giving a vivid summary of the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches to ethnical matters. Finally, it will offer some valuable recommendations and methods based on case analysis.