15. Relationships and Crisis Communication ? Just Another Young ...

Companies and organizations must create positive and trustworthy relationships with their consumers or clients in order to succeed. When a crisis occurs, this relationship is at risk of being violated. For my public relations class, I am summarizing an academic journal article on how different forms of crisis communication are implemented and perceived by consumers. People that had positive feelings towards corporations tended to not be as affected by a crisis that occurred.

When a crisis occurs, psychologically we strive to put the blame on something or someone. If we are unable to do so, we feel there is no explanation for the unfortunate situation. This can be frustrating. Keeping this in mind, the authors researched different studies as well as surveys. Strategies for these surveys included:

• Four different groups of University students

• Questions about University perceptions

• A fictitious news story containing a crisis

• Different crisis communication strategies implemented for the stories

• Results measured on a scale of Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree, which included numerical scores

• Relationship levels measured on a scale

Despite having 400 surveys distributed, only 275 were utilized for the study. Thirty-one of the respondents were male and 68 percent were female. The data that resulted from this study reinforced that people who have a positive relationship with the organization that has a crisis (in this case, the University), the more likely they are to not place blame on the organization.

This study showed extensive use of different crisis communication strategies. However, the findings show that creating and maintaining positive relationships with consumers proves more important than many other communication strategies. After all, when you like something, you don?t want that feeling to be ruined. This study reminds me of Apple Inc.?s new crisis with shady practices in their work factories being exposed. Despite the anger I and many others feel about this situation, we still own our Apple products and sales have not gone down.

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Source: http://jessicasyoungadultmind.wordpress.com/2012/03/03/15-relationships-and-crisis-communication/

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