Comparative analysis of Chinese and Japanese corporate communication on Facebook and Twitter

Abstract

Social networking sites (SNS) have become an important vehicle for corporate communication. However, there has been little research on how East Asian firms use international SNSs to communicate with global stakeholders. This study compares the communication strategies of Chinese and Japanese companies on Facebook and Twitter and analyzes the public responses and complaints on these corporate SNSs. The results revealed that in addition to the traditional strategies of corporate ability (CA) and corporate social responsibility (CSR), Chinese and Japanese firms adopted the human interest (HI) strategy. The results showed that the Chinese companies in the study sample had a stronger preference for the CSR and interactive strategies, and they responded faster to online complaints compared with the Japanese firms, which were more likely to adopt the strategy of transferring in handling complaints. Moreover, “inviting participation into events” and “seeking specific feedback” were two types of interactive messages that received the highest numbers of responses from the public on Facebook, whereas “promoting sales” showed the highest engagement on Twitter. This study is the first to compare the effectiveness of different corporate response strategies for specific complaint topics on social media. Thus, it contributes to the literature on stakeholder–company interactions.

Keywords:

• social networking site
• content analysis
• communication strategy
• complaint
• corporate communication

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the 2014 Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation of Ministry of Education of China [project number: 14YJC860037], Project Name: Comparative Analysis of Chinese, Japanese and Korean Companies’ Strategic Communication Practices in the United States.

Notes on contributors

Sheng Yuan

Sheng Yuan holds a Ph.D. in mass communications from Indiana University Bloomington. He is currently an associate professor of advertising and public relations at Wenzhou Business College in China. His research interests are focused on advertising and corporate communication. He has published articles in the Journal of Advertising Research and the International Journal of Advertising.