Reputation affection in the Samsung Electronics smartphone crisis

Reputation is seen as one of the most important intangible assets of a company. It takes years for a company to built a good reputation. However, a reputation of a company can be damaged within minutes. This is oftentimes caused by a crisis. A crisis is a “sudden and unexpected event that threatens to disrupt an organization’s operations and poses both financial and reputational treat” (Coombs, 2007, p. 164). The effective use of crisis communication can repair the reputational damage. In order for communication managers to know when crisis communication is affective one can use the situational crisis communication theory. This theory covers all important aspects of a crisis such as the type of crisis, the responsibility, response strategies and emotions. Though, the theory does not cover the perception of the public on reputation. Therefore, this study aims to find out whether or not the reputation of Samsung Electronics has been affected in the eye of the Dutch public after the crisis with regards to the exploding batteries of the Galaxy Note 7. Using a quantitative method, an online survey has been distributed in order to find out if the post-crisis reputation can be predicted based on responsibility and experiencing negative emotions. The results of this study suggest that responsibility as well as negative emotions does not have an effect on the post-crisis reputation of Samsung Electronics. This can be explained by the fact that the responsibility level within this crisis is rather low according to Coombs (2005). Additionally, the public is very familiar with Samsung Electronics as a brand and is therefore not seen as a predictor for post-crisis reputational damage. Additionally, the involvement of the Dutch public has a positive effect on the post-crisis reputation. It has been concluded that the Dutch public was highly involved since the release of a new Galaxy Note smartphone took some time. Furthermore, future study should focus more on the involvement of the public with regards to a crisis in order to provide a profound framework. This framework can be used by communication managers in order to implement more effective crisis communication in times of emergency.