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Crisis PR in social media

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Running Head: CRISIS PR IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Please cite as Kerkhof, P. Beugels, D., Utz, S., & Beukeboom, C. J. (2011). Crisis PR in social media. An

experimental study of the effects of organizational crisis responses on Facebook. Paper presented at the 61st

Annual ICA Conference, Boston (USA), 26-30 May 2011.

Crisis PR in social media

An experimental study of the effects of organizational crisis responses on Facebook

Peter Kerkhof

VU University Amsterdam /University of Amsterdam

Dionne Beugels

Sonja Utz

Camiel Beukeboom

VU University Amsterdam

The Netherlands

Paper presented at the 61st Annual ICA Conference, Boston (USA), 26-30 May 2011. Please

direct correspondence to Peter Kerkhof, department of Communication Science, VU

University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081, 1081HV Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Tel. 0031

20 5986854. E-mail p.kerkhof@vu.nl.

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Abstract

In this paper we compare the effects of different organizational crisis responses in social

media after negative publicity regarding the organization. Building on earlier work in crisis

communication (e.g., Bradford & Garrett, 1995; Kim, Avery & Lariscy, 2009), we distinguish

apology and denial as organizational responses. Building on recent work on corporate blogs

by Kelleher (2009), we distinguish a personal and a corporate tone of voice and predict that a

personal tone of voice is more effective in social media because it makes the organization

look more human and more committed to the relationship with its customers.

The hypotheses were tested using a 2 (apologies vs. denial) x 2 (corporate vs.

personal) + 1 control group (no response) between subjects experimental design, building on a

recent case in which H&M got involved in a discussion with its Facebook community after

reports about cutting up and throwing away unsold garments (instead of donating the

garments to the homeless). The 125 participants read an online news report about the incident,

and were then shown the H&M Facebook page on which H&M either apologized or denied

the incident, and did so in a personal or a corporate manner. A control group only read the

online news story.

The results showed that apologizing led to higher credibility and a more positive

attitude towards the response, but increased the perceived responsibility of the organization

for the crisis event. A personal tone of voice increased conversational human voice,

communicated relational commitment and decreased negative cognitive responses, especially

in the case of denial. The results are discussed in the light of the difficulties that organizations

face when operating in social media.

Key words: crisis communication, PR, social media, apologizing vs. denial, human

conversational voice.

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Crisis PR in social media. An experimental study of the effects of

organizational crisis responses on Facebook

On January 6 2010, a news article appeared in the New York Times stating that the H&M

store in Manhattan discarded bags of unsold and unworn garments. All garments were

destroyed by making holes in them in order to make sure they would not be sold elsewhere

(New York Times, 2009). A few hours later, the Huffington Post – a popular American weblog

– followed the New York Times in reporting about the H&M scandal (Huffingtonpost.com,

2010). Soon after, numerous people made a comment on the Huffington Post website, and the

H&M Facebook page was overflowed with reactions from H&M fans. As a resonse to these

messages H&M came with the following statement: “H&M is committed to take responsibility

for how our operations affect both people and the environment. Our policy is to donate any

damaged usable garments to charity. We're currently investigating an incident in a NY store

that is not representative of our policy. We will follow with more information as soon as we

are able. H&M's US sales operation donates thousands of garments each year through Gifts

In Kind Int.” This statement was posted twice that day and over thousand people 'liked' it but

266 people posted mainly negative reactions to the statement (Facebook, 2010). H&M also

reacted on Twitter in which they referred to their statement on Facebook: “This incident is not

a representative example of H&M policy. Full statement at facebook.com/hm. We are

investigating. Please RT.” A lot of retweets followed and the day after, the H&M case was

worldwide trending topic number 2 on Twitter. One day later, newspapers, news websites and

blogs reported about the news. H&M examined the incident and came with the following

statement a few days later: “We have examined the situation surrounding the garments found

outside of our 34th Street store. It is important to note that these garments were already

damaged, and did not meet our safety standards or had been used for in-store display. Going

forward, we are reevaluating what we categorize as "damaged" garments and we continue to

be committed to donating as many of these items as possible to aid organizations. H&M

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annually donates hundreds of thousands of garments to charity and aid organizations, and

will continue to do so. For a list of organizations and more information regarding our

corporate social responsibility, please visit www.hm.com/csr.” Again, almost 800 people

'liked' this statement and another 380 H&M fans posted a reaction, the majority being

skeptical about the H&M response.

The H&M incident is not the only example of an organization that uses social media

during times of crisis. Companies like General Motors (during its near bankruptcy in 2009)

and Toyota (the 2010 car recalls) use social media like Twitter and Facebook during times of

crisis to influence public perceptions of the crisis, to answer questions from consumers

regarding the crisis, and to avert the consequences of negative publicity. Negative publicity

has the potential to damage the reputation of an organization, corporate credibility and trust in

an organization (Dean, 2004; Kerkhof, 2009; Perry, Taylor & Doerfel, 2003).

Little is known about the effectiveness of social media PR in restoring trust and in

averting the negative consequences of negative publicity, and little systematic research has

been devoted to this relatively new phenomenon. In this paper we report about an experiment

in which the H&M response was varied among two dimensions: the content of the response

(apologizing vs. denial) and the tone of voice of the response (personal vs. corporate).

Accepting responsibility through apologizing is frequently found to be an effective

communication strategy (Bradford & Garrett, 1995; Kim et al., 2009), whereas denial is

typically considered less effective, but still the most frequently used communication strategy

(Kim et al., 2009). A personal rather than a corporate tone of voice is deemed effective by

several authors. Solis and Breakenridge (2009) argue that in PR 2.0 it is important to

humanize the story and become part of the conversation instead of trying to sell your way into

it. This suggests a personal rather than a corporate response. Similarly, articles in the field of

service recovery and online customer care suggest a personal tone of voice over a corporate

one (Kerkhof, Vonkeman, Beukeboom, Utz, 2011).

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PR in Web 2.0

In just a few years social media have become very popular, both for consumers and

increaslingly for organizations. People like to talk about brands and products in social media

environments (like Twitter, e.g. Jansen, Zang, Sobel, & Chowdury, 2009) and to share

opinions about businesses, and products (word-of-mouth). Consumers use web

communications and especially social media communications as trusted sources for

information, insights and opinions, which influences consumer brand perceptions and

purchase intentions (Jansen et al., 2009). Positive online word-of-mouth has become a

powerful marketing tool for organizations to influence consumers.

Today, a lot of companies have acknowledged the social media's presence by having a

blog, Facebook page or a Twitter account. Organizations can use social media to virtually

meet consumers and create dialogue, for example by receiving feedback or creating an

extension of the customer service. Another important aspect of social media is the opportunity

for organizations to respond swiftly (Kirat, 2007). Wright and Hinson (2009) showed that

88% of the respondents in their study (all PR practitioners) believe that social media make

communications more instantaneous because they encourage organizations to respond quickly

to criticism. Still, many large organizations struggle with the challenge to communicate

interactively with a large online public (Kelleher, 2009).

So far there has been very little research about PR 2.0 and effective organizational

responses in social media to negative publicity such as the above mentioned H&M case.

Besides, previous experimental research regarding the effects of crisis responses has almost

exclusively used print media as response stimuli (Coombs & Holladay, 2009). How the public

perceives and experiences these online corporate responses in online media is an important

step in executing more effective online PR. The main research question for this study is how

different types of organizational crisis responses in social media and the tone of voice of those

responses affect corporate credibility.

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Crisis PR in social media: how to communicate?

Traditional PR emphasized one-way communication, from a sender to a large audience

or from few to many (Hurme, 2001). Wright and Hinson (2009) conclude that social media

have had a huge impact moving PR into the direction of facilitating more two-way

communication by allowing “direct-to-consumer-conversations” between organizations and

their public without going through news media gate keeping (Kirat, 2007). The interactive

communicative element in PR 2.0 does not exclude traditional PR, but this should according

to some authors be part of an interactive communication mix (Galloway, 2005).

Previous studies (Perry et al., 2003; Taylor & Perry, 2005) show that traditional public

relation tactics, such as the news release, are still the most prevalent tactics used in crisis and

new communication tactics such as a two-way communication are less frequently used.

However, more recent research about crisis responses suggests that the Internet is already

being used in approximately half of the crisis studied (Taylor & Kent, 2007). The Internet

however has changed rapidly during the last years, with a social network site like Facebook

growing from 100 million in 2007 to over 500 million members in 2011, and with the number

of daily tweets growing from almost none in the beginning of 2007 to over 110 million in

2011.

The question is how organizations can operate effectively in such a media

environment. Responses in social media can be characterized as a more informal written

language, with a focus on human interaction rather than an objective description (Oegema,

Kleinnijenhuis, Anderson & van Hoof, 2008). Solis and Breakenridge (2009) state that PR in

social media requires organizations to participate in online conversations in a more informal

and human manner than organizations are used to operate. Since social media content is

perceived as more personal and less formal, it can be reasoned that a personal response to a

crisis event will be more effective than the kind of corporate response that is typically done in

a traditional press release.

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Kelleher and Miller (2006) and Kelleher (2009) investigated interactive online

communication via organizational blogs in which conversational human voice and

communicated relational commitment were central concepts. They define conversational

human voice as “an engaging and natural style of organizational communication as perceived

by an organization's public based on interactions between individuals in the organization and

individuals in public and communicated relational commitment”. Communicated relational

commitment -from the perspective of the public- is defined as “a type of content of

communication in which members of an organization work to express their commitment to

building and maintaining a relationship”. In an experimental study Kelleher and Miller (2006)

showed participants either a corporate blog condition or a corporate web page. Participants

assigned to the blog condition perceived the organization's conversational human voice to be

higher than participants assigned to the condition in which they read traditional web pages.

Furthermore, it was found that conversational human voice and communicated relational

commitment correlated positively with relational outcomes, such as trust, satisfaction,

commitment and control mutuality (Kelleher & Miller, 2006; Kelleher, 2009).

The work by Kelleher et al. focuses on organizational blogs (compared to corporate

websites). Recently Kerkhof et al. (2011) extended this line of thinking to tone of voice in

online customer care. As is the case for online PR, online customer care, where employees

respond publicly to customer questions and complaints, takes place in consumer forums or

social network sites where consumer rather than organizations set the rules. This makes it

important to respond in a human manner and in a manner that communicates relational

commitment. Indeed, Kerkhof et al. (2011) show that a personal (vs. a corporate) tone of

voice is perceived as more human and as communicating relational commitment.

A recent study by Yang, Kang and Johnson (2010) established results that are in line

with the findings by Kerkhof et al. (2001) and Kelleher (2009). The use of invitational

rhetoric in a blogpost helped to create the impression that the company is open to dialogue.

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Openness to dialogical communication in turn enhanced audience engagement in crisis

communication and elicited positive post crisis perceptions. Following this reasoning, we

expect that a personal (vs. a corporate) tone of voice enhances the perception of the

organization as speaking with a human voice and as committed to having a good relationship

with its customers.

Crisis PR in social media: what to say?

A crisis is a sudden and unexpected event that threatens to disrupt an organization's operation

and poses a financial and reputational threat (Coombs & Holladay, 2005). Crises result in

negative publicity for corporations that may threaten corporate reputation (Coombs, 2007;

Dean, 2004) and can deteriorate the relationship between an organization and its publics

(Coombs & Halladay, 2005; Hearit, 1994). Communication following the crisis plays an

integral role in successful crisis management (Ulmer, 2001), which is a process designed to

prevent or mitigate the damage a crisis can have on an organization and its stakeholders.

Organizations faced with accusations of wrongdoings can choose several

communicative responses in order to restore the corporate image. Some offer apologies,

thereby admitting their responsibility, others choose to not react, hoping that the attention to

the issue will diminish. However, silence in the eyes of the public is similar to an admission

of guilt. Others deny their responsibility, which may have the unintended consequence of

increasing the importance of the story (Hearit, 1994).

One of the predominant paradigms for crisis communication research in public

relations for the past eighteen years is Benoit's (1995) Image Restoration Theory. This theory

offers five broad categories of image repair strategies: denial, evasion of responsibility,

reducing the offensiveness of the wrongful act, corrective action, and mortification, including

an organization to confess and ask for forgiveness (Benoit, 1997). Bradford and Garret (1995)

investigated in experimental research the effectiveness of Benoit’s five different corporate

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responses on the consumer perception of corporate image and found that concession was the

optimal communication strategy, whereas no response negatively affected corporate image.

This is in line with findings from Conlon and Murray (1996) who conclude that a corporate

response including an apology and accepting responsibility for a negative event positively

affects consumers’ evaluation of the organization.

Kim et al. (2009) reviewed the effectiveness of response strategies in crisis situations

in 51 articles over the past eighteen years. According to the authors, the most effective crisis

strategy was full apology, 71.4% of the full apology strategies employed were evaluated as

effective. In their analysis, authors evaluated denial as the least effective strategy: only 13.8%

of the denial strategies employed were evaluated as effective. This result was surprising,

because denial was also found to be the second most often used strategy for organizations

(Kim et al., 2009). According to Coombs (2007a) and Benoit (1997) denial may only be

useful when the crisis challenge is unwarranted or when the organization is not held

responsible.

Assessing responsibility is an integral part of how consumers evaluate an organization

in the case of an apparent wrongdoing. Attribution theory is based on the premise that people

need to assign responsibility for events; people look for the causes of events, especially

unexpected and negative events (Weiner, 1986; Coombs, 2007). Consequently, these

responsibility allocations from stakeholders will have affective and behavioral consequences

for an organization (Coombs, 2007). We will assess the effects of tone of voice and denial vs.

apologies vs. no response on the perceived responsibility for the event.

The type of response by an organization may interact with the tone of voice and

together determine consumer evaluations. According to Bell and Zemke (1987) a personal

apologizing response is more effective because it feels sincere and authentic in comparison

with a typical corporate response, which may come across as a standard and impersonal

response. Also, a narrative apology is more effective than a narrative denial after an integrity-

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violation in blog posts, because the violator is seen as more ‘human’ (van Laer & de Ruyter,

2010). Because a personal response is also perceived as more ‘human’, the same could be the

case for a personal response and a corporate response in social media. Therefore, it is

expected that a personal apology, in which someone in the organization is acknowledging that

the organization was at fault, is more effective than a corporate, formal apology.

To summarize, we propose that the organizational response to the crisis event consists of

three response types: apologizing, denial and no response. It is expected that these three

corporate responses will directly influence corporate credibility and responsibility for the

event. Furthermore, two different types of tone of voice are distinguished, a personal and a

corporate tone of voice. It is expected that the tone of voice will affect communicated

relational commitment and conversational human voice. Moreover, tone of voice may

moderate the relationship between the type of response and corporate credibility. Apart from

assessing attitudes we will also assess the cognitive responses to the organizational messages

we use in our study. Petty and Cacioppo (1979) state that direct cognitive responses mediate

the relationship between messages and attitude change.

Method

Design

We tested our hypotheses using an experimental design. Participants were randomly assigned

to a 2 (type of response: apologizing vs. denial) x 2 (tone of voice: personal vs. corporate)

experimental between subjects research design plus a control group (the no response

condition, see Table 1 for an overview of the 5 conditions). The five conditions can be seen in

Table 1. Participants first saw an online news message in a nu.nl (a Dutch news site) layout, in

which the H&M incident was shortly described. Then, participants in all the experimental

conditions (but not the “no response” condition), saw one of the four manipulated responses

of H&M in a Facebook layout.

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Participants

The online questionnaire was made available online on May 2, 2010 and closed on May 14,

2010. Participants were recruited by two sampling procedures, specifically availability

sampling and snowball sampling. First, participants (family and friends) were approached by

e-mail, social network sites and MSN messenger. Furthermore, the potential participants were

asked to send the link to the questionnaire to 5-10 other people. Besides, the questionnaire

was made available for first year ungraduate Communication students.

A total of 125 participants filled out the questionnaire completely. The age of

respondents ranged from 18 until 63 years old (M=26.27 years). More women than men

participated in this study, 76% (N=95) of all respondents was female and only 14% (N=30)

was male. Most respondents in this study were highly educated: the majority (44%, N=55) of

the respondents had a bachelor’s degree and 27.2% (N=34) had a master’s degree.

Respondents in this study used the Internet between 1-600 minutes a day, with a mean of

124.53 minutes a day. More than 90% of the respondents use social media, spending on

average 27.70 minutes per day on social network sites. Hyves (the largest social network site

in the Netherlands) is most frequently used as a social medium; 76.2% (N=96) of the

respondents use Hyves. Facebook and You Tube are also popular social media in this study,

59.9% (N=75) of the respondents use Facebook and 53.2% (N=67) use You Tube.

Stimulus materials

The participants were introduced to the H&M case with a short Dutch language news article

based on the article that appeared in the New York Times on January 6. The news article used

in this study was formatted to a “nu.nl” layout which is the largest Dutch online news website.

Participants in the four experimental conditions (formal apologizing, formal denial, personal

apologizing and personal denial) then saw the Facebook fan page of H&M including one of

the four manipulated responses of H&M. The Facebook layout was kept in order to keep the

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look and feel of a real corporate response in social media. Each participant saw only one of

the four responses. In manipulating the corporate responses, a first distinction was made

between a response with a corporate and a personal tone of voice. In the personal conditions a

photograph of a fictitious person named Anna de Vries was shown accompanying the

response. The two corporate responses used the H&M logo as profile picture. The content of

the formal and personal responses were kept as similar as possible. The main difference

between the corporate and the personal conditions was the perspective from which the

response was written. In the personal condition, both the apologizing and the denial response

were written in the name of Anna de Vries, who speaks using the first person for H&M. In the

corporate condition, the response was written in the name of H&M, using the third person.

A second manipulation included the distinction between the apologizing and the denial

response. The denial response was based on the actual response of H&M. The main message

in the denial conditions was that the clothes were already damaged and did not meet the safety

requirements anymore. In the apologizing condition, the main message was that H&M takes

responsibility and apologizes for what happened in Manhattan.

Pretest

Before the questionnaire was made available online, a pretest questionnaire was developed in

order to check whether the manipulations were successful. A total of 34 participants filled out

the pretest. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions: corporate

apologizing (N=10), corporate denial (N=8), personal apologizing (N=9) and personal denial

(N=7). Since respondents in the “no response” condition only saw the news article and not

one of the four manipulated responses, only four pretest questionnaires were developed.

Participants first saw the news article which was directly followed by the one of the four

manipulated corporate responses of H&M. Subsequently, questions concerning the tone of

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voice manipulation (corporate versus personal) and concerning the type of response

manipulation (apologizing versus denial) were asked.

The first question with regard to the denial response was 'In this response, H&M denies

the news message'. Respondents had to indicate on a 7 point Likert scale (1= 'totally agree',

7= 'totally disagree') to what extent they agreed or disagreed with this statement. There was a

significant difference between respondents who saw an apologizing response and respondents

who saw a denial response (t(33)= 2.980, p = .050). Respondents who saw the denial response

(M=3.00, SD=1.710) agreed significantly more with this statement that respondents who saw

the apologizing response (M=4.95, SD=2.012). The second pretest question with regard to the

apologizing response was: 'In this response apologies are offered'. There was again a

significant difference between respondents who saw the apologizing response and

respondents who saw the denial response (t(33)= -6.499, p = .000). Respondents who saw the

apologizing response (M=2.29, SD=1.554) agreed significantly more with this statement than

respondents who saw the denial response (M=5.71, SD=1.490). Therefore, the type of

response manipulations were successful as indicated by the pretest results and no adaptations

were made for the main questionnaire.

To test the manipulation of tone of voice we asked participants to react to the

statement 'The sender of this message reacts in a formal manner’ on a 7 point Likert scale (1=

'totally agree', 7= 'totally disagree') as all the other questions described below. There was a

marginally significant difference between the personal and corporate condition (t(33) = -1.77,

p = .087), with respondents in the corporate condition (M=3.56, SD=1.92) rating this

statement as more formal than respondents in the personal condition (M=4.59, SD=1.502).

The second question was 'The sender of the response is a person /an employee of H&M.'

(t(19.915) = 3.98, p = .001). As expected, respondents in the personal condition (M=1.82,

SD=0.64) significantly more often indicated that the sender of the response was an employee

than respondents in the corporate condition (M=4.00, SD=2.22). Finally, there was a

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marginally significant difference between the two groups on the question: 'I think the sender

of the message is a nice person' (t(33) = 1.785, p = .083), with respondents in the personal

condition (M=3.12, SD=0.86) agreeing more with this statement than respondents in the

corporate condition (M=3.61, SD=0.78).

Dependent variables

The manipulation check consisted of one item measuring the type of response (apologizing

versus denial): 'How do you experience the response of H&M on Facebook'. The answer

options for this question were 'H&M is apologizing' (1) and 'H&M denies the situation' (2).

Another item was used to check whether the corporate versus personal manipulation was

successful. Respondents were asked to indicate whether the sender of the Facebook response

was the company H&M vs. an H&M employee.

Conversational human voice was measured with 10 items adapted from Kelleher

(2009). Examples of items are 'H&M invites people to conversation' and 'H&M attempts to

make communication enjoyable'. Respondents had to answer on a 5 point Likert scale (1=

'totally disagree', 5= 'totally agree'). Items were compiled into a mean index (Cronbach's α =

.84).

Also adapted from Kelleher & Miller (2006) and Kelleher (2009) was the scale

measuring communicated relational commitment. The scale consisted of the following six

items: 'H&M attempts to demonstrate they are committed to maintaining the relationship',

'H&M communicates the organization’s desire to continue to maintain and/or build a

relationship', 'H&M stresses commitment to me and others', 'H&M implies that our

relationship has a future/is a long-term commitment', 'H&M directly discusses the nature of

the organization' and 'H&M emphasizes the quality of our relationship'. Respondents had to

indicate to what degree they 'strongly disagreed' (1) or 'strongly agreed' (5) with each of these

statements on a 5 point Likert scale. Items were again compiled into a mean index

(Cronbach's α = .82).

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Responsibility was measured with three items adapted from Coombs and Holladay

(2002). In contrast to the two above-mentioned questions, this question was not only available

for the four experimental conditions, but also for the control or 'no response' condition. The

three questions about responsibility were: 'Circumstances, not the organization, are

responsible for the crisis', 'The blame for the crisis lies with the organization' and 'The blame

for the crisis lies in the circumstances, not the organization'. The three items were measured

on a 5 point Likert scale (1='strongly disagree', 5= 'strongly agree') and combined into a scale

(Cronbach's α = .86).

Corporate credibility was assessed in all 5 conditions using eight items on a 7 point

Likert scale adapted from Newell and Goldsmith (2001). According to Newell and Goldsmith

corporate credibility is “the extent to which consumers feel that the firm has the knowledge or

ability to fulfill its claims and whether the firm can be trusted to tell the truth or not”. The

items in this scale measure the organizational credibility by two dimensions, namely the

amount of expertise and trustworthiness consumers perceive in a corporation. Corporate

credibility was assessed in all conditions, including the control condition. Examples of items

are 'H&M is skilled in what they do' and 'H&M makes trustful claims', referring to expertise

and trustworthiness respectively. Answer categories ranged from 'totally disagree' (1) to

'totally agree' (7). This scale was compiled into a mean index (Cronbach's α= .80).

Attitude towards the response is only measured in the four experimental conditions.

Participants indicate to what degree they think the response of H&M is 'totally adequate'/'not

adequate at all', 'very honest'/'not very honest', 'very sincere'/'not very sincere' and 'very

trustworthy'/ 'not very trustworthy'. The scale, which consisted of a mean index, was reliable

(Cronbach's α = .71).

Cognitive responses. Directly after respondents saw the one of the four organizational

responses, their cognitive responses were assessed. The cognitive response question was an

open-ended question in which respondents had to write down all thoughts that came up after

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reading the organizational response. This cognitive response variable was recoded into a

variable measuring positive cognitive response (0= 'no positive cognitive response', 1=

'positive cognitive response) and a variable measuring negative cognitive response (0 = 'no

negative cognitive response', 1= 'negative cognitive response'). A cognitive response was

coded as positive when people said something positive about the response. For example, “a

positive reaction of H&M”, “an appropriate response of H&M” or” H&M reacts good, I

believe them”. A cognitive response was coded as negative when people said something

negative about the response or about the company H&M. Examples are: “This is nonsense,

damaged clothes can also be sent to charities”, “a very simple response of H&M which does

not have a content” or “It is very easy to respond like this, probably a way to attract the

customers who ran away”.

Results

Manipulation check

The manipulation of apologies vs. denial was successful (Pearson chi square = 29.43, p =

.000). In the apology condition respondents perceived the response more often as an apology

(85.7%) than in the denial condition (32.0%).

Also, there was a marginally significant difference between a personal and a corporate

tone of voice on the question concerning the sender of the message (Pearson chi square =

3.25, p = .071. In the personal condition respondents perceived the response more often as

written by an employee (65.2%) than in the corporate condition (47.2%).

Effects of responding versus not responding

In the first analysis, we compared the effects of responding vs. not responding using an

ANOVA comparing the mean scores in all five groups on credibility and responsibility. There

was a marginally significant difference between the responsibility scores in the 5 conditions,

F(4,120)=2.072, p = .089. However, the Bonferroni post-hoc test showed that none of the

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response conditions differed from the no-response condition.

Effects of the four types of responses

To examine the effects of the four different types of responding, a 2 (type of response:

apologizing versus denial) x 2 (tone of voice: corporate versus personal) between subjects

ANOVA was performed. The respondents in the no response condition (control condition)

were not taken along in this analysis. A summary of the results of this 2 x 2 ANOVA can be

found in Table 2 and will be explained below.

Type of response: effects of apologizing versus denial

A marginally significant main effect of the type of response on corporate credibility was

found, (F(1,95) = 2.812, p = .097). Respondents in the apologizing condition (M= 4.75, SD =

.78) find H&M more credible than respondents in the denial condition (M=4.48, SD = .75).

Also, type of response (apologizing versus denial) had a significant main effect on the

mediating variable responsibility (F(1,95) = 5.985, p = .016). This indicates that respondents

in the apologizing condition (M= 3.81, SD = .88) find H&M more responsible for the incident

than respondents in the denial condition (M=3.37, SD = .96). Furthermore, it appeared that

type of response had a marginally significant main effect on the attitude towards the response

(F(1,93) = 3.414, p = .068). As expected, respondents in the apologizing condition (M=4.27,

SD = .99) have a more positive attitude towards the response than respondents in the denial

condition (M=3.88, SD = 1.04). No significant main effects of type of response were found on

conversational human voice, communicated relational commitment, and cognitive responses.

Tone of voice: effects of a corporate versus personal tone of voice

Counter to expectations, there was no significant main effect of tone of voice (personal versus

corporate) on corporate credibility. As expected, there was a significant main effect of tone of

voice on conversational human voice (F(1,95) = 8.213, p = .005). Respondents in the personal

conditions rated the H&M response as more human (M=3.21, SD = .54) than respondents in

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the corporate conditions (M=2.84, SD = .71). Furthermore, there was a main effect of tone of

voice on communicated relational commitment (F(1,95) = 4.698, p = .033). Respondents in

the personal conditions also rated H&M’s relational commitment higher (M=3.55, SD = .69)

than respondents in the corporate conditions (M=3.24, SD = .75). Additionally, there was a

significant main effect on negative cognitive responses (F(1,95) = 5.751, p = .018).

Respondents in the corporate conditions reported almost twice as many (M=0.47, SD = .50)

negative cognitive responses as the respondents in the personal condition (M=0.24, SD = .43).

There were no effects of tone of voice on responsibility, credibility, attitude towards the

response and positive cognitive responses.

Interaction effect between type of response and tone of voice

There was a significant interaction effect of type of respons and tone of vice on

communicated relational commitment (F(1,95) = 5.763, p = .018). Respondents in the

personal denial condition (M=3.70, SD = .70) scored higher on commitment than respondents

in the corporate denial condition (M=3.06, SD = .74). Bonferroni post-hoc tests in a simple

ANCOVA with the four experimental groups as factor and conversational human voice as the

dependent variable, showed that this difference was significant and there were no other

significant differences between the groups. Thus, when H&M denied the incident,

communicated relational commitment was higher in the personal condition than in the

corporate condition. There was no difference between a personal and a corporate apology.

There was another interaction effect on conversational human voice (F(1,95) = 4.263,

p = .042). As for communicated relational commitment, there is again an effect of reacting in

a personal or corporate manner when H&M denies the incident. Bonferroni post-hoc tests in a

simple ANOVA with the four experimental groups as factor and conversational human voice

as the dependent variable, show that there is a significant difference between a formal denial

response (M=2.63, SD = .69) and both a personal apologizing response (M=3.12, SD = .55)

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and a personal denial response (M=3.25, SD = .55). A personal apology and a personal denial

lead to higher conversational human voice than a corporate denial response.

Conclusion and discussion

Some limitations should be noted before drawing conclusions from the results [presented in

this paper. This study only investigates one case, within one particular social network site, and

with two types of corporate responses to crisis situations. A variation in each of these may

alter the results and one should thus be careful not to generalize to easily to other situations

than the one described.

Notwithstanding the limitations, we believe there are some lessons to be learned from

our study. Tone of voice matters in social network sites like Facebook and probably in other

social network sites too. A personal tone of voice led to higher communicated relational

commitment when compared to a corporate tone of voice. Communicated relational

commitment includes the concepts ‘assurance’ and ‘openness’. Assurances include those

efforts an organization takes to assure that the concerns of the public are acknowledged

(Kelleher, 2009). A personal tone of voice makes the public believe that an organization cares

about the ideas, opinions and reactions of the public on the incident. The other concept,

openness, refers to the fact that people in an organization can freely discuss their own

thoughts about the organization (Kelleher, 2009). A personal tone of voice may lead to more

perceived openness by the public, since the response is from a person within the organization

who discusses an important and sensitive event. A corporate response may signal distance

between the organization and its employees and therefore less assurances and openness. This

is in line with previous research of personalizing responses on negative consumer reviews, in

which it was found that a personal response was perceived as more human and led to higher

communicated relational commitment (Kerkhof et al., 2011). Positive effects of a personal

tone of voice on conversational human voice were also found in the current study. Kelleher

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(2009) already pointed out in his study that blogs have a positive effect on conversational

human voice and this study adds that responding personally on the social medium Facebook

positively affects conversational human voice. Kuhn (2005) stated that the interactive element

in blogs functions to humanize blogs. Similarly, a personal style of communicating may

humanize a brand that is active in Facebook.

Surprisingly, a personal denial was the most effective response, leading to more

communicated relational commitment when compared to a corporate denial. A personal

apology did not differ from any of the other responses. With regard to conversational human

voice, a corporate denial was seen as significantly less human compared to a personal apology

and a personal denial. Both personal responses led to higher communicated relational

commitment and conversational human voice. A possible explanation for these findings could

be that consumers already feel sympathy for the organization that apologizes. The public may

judge the apology as an open and honest response, which implies taking the concerns of the

public into account, regardless of whether the response is corporate or personal. Denial on the

other hand does not lead to sympathy and in that case a personal style of communicating adds

a human aspect to the response.

As expected apologizing in crisis situations is more effective than denial in terms of

credibility. Even though H&M is perceived as more responsible for the incident when

apologizing, apologizing led to a more positive attitude towards the response when compared

to denial. An apology is associated with an increase in responsibility, because a company

takes the blame for the incident and admits its own wrongdoings. The opposite is the case for

denial: an organization indirectly pronounces that the incident was not their fault and is not

taking responsibility. Previous research regarding integrity violations in blog posts (van Laer

& de Ruyter, 2010) already indicated that an apology is positively related to guilt and people

regard guilt admissions as a negative sign, especially when the wrongdoing is a moral

transgression. Still, in our study as in many other studies, apologizing is positively evaluated

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and leads to higher credibility. Apologizing may lead to the impression that the company is

‘problem-solving oriented’ rather than escaping to take responsibility in case of a denial

response (Xie & Peng, 2009).

In sum, the effects of a personal (vs. a corporate) tone of voice are more consistently

positive than the effects of an apology (vs. denial) and may even compensate for the negative

effects of denial. Although crisis PR in social media may in many ways be similar to

traditional crisis PR (e.g., the effects of apologies), the tone of voice effect may be more

characteristic of social media than of traditional media. Future research should aim at

unraveling the precise mechanisms behind the effects of a personal tone of voice.

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Table 1 Research design

Response:

apologizing (N=50)

Response:

Denial (N=49)

Control condition: no

response (N=26)

Tone of voice:

personal (N=46)

Personal apologizing

(N=24)

Personal denial

(N=22)

Tone of voice:

corporate (N=53)

Corporate apologizing

(N=26)

Corporate denial

(N=27)

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Table 2: Results of the 2 (type of response: apologizing versus denial) x 2 (tone of voice

(personal versus corporate) ANOVA

Independent

variable

Dependent variables F (1,95) Sig

Type of response

(apologizing versus

denial)

Corporate credibility

Responsibility

Communicated relational commitment

Conversational human voice

Attitude towards the response

Negative cognitive responses

Positive cognitive response s

2.812

5.985

0.076

2.147

3.414

1.681

0.206

0.097(*)

0.016*

0.783

0.146

0.068(*)

0.198

0.357

Tone of voice

(corporate versus

personal)

Corporate credibility

Responsibility

Communicated relational commitment

Conversational human voice

Attitude towards the response

Negative cognitive responses

Positive cognitive responses

0.461

0.196

4.698

8.213

2.766

5.751

0.509

0.499

0.659

0.033*

0.005**

0.100

0.018*

0.477

Type of response *

Tone of voice

Corporate credibility

Responsibility

Communicated relational commitment

Conversational human voice

Attitude towards the responses

Negative cognitive responses

Positive cognitive response

0.341

2.069

5.763

4.263

0.001

0.087

0.001

0.561

0.154

0.018*

0.042*

0.972

0.769

0.974

(*) p < 0.10; * p < 0.05