Intercultural Crisis Communication In Chinese Context

The vigorous development of new media enables everyone to transmit and receive information worldwide.Any corporate crisis will spread rapidly and become the focus of the public.The proper management of crisis has an important impact on the image and survival of the corporate.With the rapid development of economic globalization and the further deepening and implementation of China’s reform and opening up,China has increasingly had close ties with other countries in the world.More and more foreign enterprises come to China to seek broader development space.However,in intercultural crisis communication,one-size-fits-all crisis communication strategies that are effective in western societies may not be applicable in Chinese society.SCCT(situational crisis communication theory)should be adapted to meet the local contexts.Based on SCCT,this paper mainly studies the online comments on Dolce & Gabbana’s China event,so as to promote the intercultural crisis communication in the context of China by summarizing the lessons learned from the failure of D&G’s crisis communication.It is expected to alert multinational companies in China and provide exploratory research preparation for subsequent academic research.By collecting online posts concerning D&G’s crisis communication from major Chinese social platforms including Sina Weibo(295 posts),Zhihu(133 posts),We Chat official account(23 posts)as well as Instagram(241 posts),Facebook(21 posts)and You Tube(82 posts)to represent different perspectives,and with 11 semi-structured interviews(3 university professors and 8 students of different majors)for triangulation,this author analyzes the online posts concerning D&G’s crisis response strategies in China.Comments on suggested strategies are also collected and categorized from Zhihu,We Chat account and interviews.The purpose of this process is to find out the public comments on the strategies adopted by Dolce & Gabbana and the strategies proposed by the public for this case,and then analyze and find out whether these comments are consistent with or inconsistent with SCCT,so as to better facilitate crisis communication in the Chinese context and improve the theory.Finally,cultural factors are incorporated to explain the comments and promote the SCCT in Chinese context.The major findings are as follows:Firstly,the study shows that the public regard denial strategy as outdated and effortless excuse,which can demonstrate arrogance.Denial strategy also indicates lack of responsibility,sincerity and courage.What’s more,denial strategy backfires in this case due to D&G’s false attribution of responsibility.To be specific,in addition to the organization’s negative crisis history,inviolable national dignity and nationalistic sentiment and the close connection between designer and products lead to greater internal attribution of the organization in the Chinese context.Under the victimage strategy,D&G’s arrogance and self-centered mindset can be reflected because of the absence of “sorry” to the Chinese people and between the company’s words in the statement.It can also indicate a self-centered mindset with the word ‘unfortunate’ with sympathy for themselves while ignoring the harm to Chinese consumers.Under the apology strategy,cultural misunderstanding is regarded as excuse because they evade the crucial point--value which is the cornerstone of an organization.As to the manner of apology,implicit information such as dressing,gesture,language are reflections of insincerity.Untimeliness is also an indicator of being forced to apologize.Secondly,no response strategy put forward by the public is complementary to SCCT in the Chinese context.Under the compensation strategy,it is necessary to clarify to whom compensation should be made.As suggested by the public,organizations are supposed to compensate the customers,the underdeveloped and the employees.Under the ingratiation strategy,D&G is supposed to design products that can appeal to Chinese people and remind people of the bad prior history to make corrective actions.Thirdly,interpersonal relationship between strangers requires organizations to produce official certificates to gain public trust,and face-saving mindset determines that extreme tactics such as denial and victimage should be avoided in order not to lose face and time.Efforts and money should be devoted in order to save face.No response is often considered to be a wise option in Chinese culture with low uncertainty avoidance.Lastly,Chinese high context culture warns crisis communicators to pay attention to body language,dressing,gestures and facial expressions in apology and to make justification at the beginning to avoid ambiguity.Under a context with high power distance,government and traditional media support can help brands regain their trust from public.The above findings show that SCCT can be readily promoted and developed in Chinese context by analyzing these online comments in different social media.Theoretically,combined with the collected comments,this study demonstrates the inconsistencies between the situational crisis communication theory and Chinese culture,and provides meaningful enlightenment for the development of the situational crisis communication theory in China.Practically,this study provides some enlightening suggestions for multinational corporations in conducting crisis communication in China.On the whole,this study contributes to the intercultural crisis communication in Chinese context by proving that effective intercultural communication presupposes equality,mutual respect and empathy.