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Social media impact on business performance
Impact of social media on business performance
Social media impact on business performance
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Introduction
On July 16, 2012 during a Christian radio interview, Chick-Fil-A’s President and COO Dan Cathy were asked to provide his opinion on the idea of marriage. Dan responded to the question by stating his values and the values that his father Truett Cathy and his brother set from the beginning of the company. These marriage values included the biblical definition of marriage and went on to discuss how they were not only a family owned business but a family-led one as well (Sudhaman & Holmes, 2012, p. 10). These comments including their recent contributions to anti-gay causes triggered a firestorm in the gay community, including calls for boycotts. The comments sparked a backlash among the gay and lesbian community who called for boycotts of their restaurants. With the use of Social Media, the company has been able to make it through their crisis and come out the other side successfully.
Communication
While many companies have experienced their own crisis, Chick-Fil-A was one of the first to experience it through social media. Dan Cathy’s comments were made on July 16 and within 24 hours media figures and celebrities’ comments were being spread through social media forms such as Twitter. The majority of these tweets was against the company, and even employed social media to create a Facebook event for same sex couples.
Within two days, the comments that were made by Chick-Fil-A had been spread worldwide with such forms of social media as Twitter and Facebook. Using the same form as the negative comments Chick-Fil-A decided to respond by making their comments on their Facebook page. Over the next two weeks the following post was shared over 11,000 times, “The Chick-Fil-A culture and service tradition in our rest...
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...g his personal views onto his company then to express them is not an effective form of communication. Chick-Fil-A was able to weather the social media storm and come through relatively unscathed this time, however, if they do not work to correct the problem they may not be so lucky next time.
Works Cited
Peters, C., Benjumea, J., Garner, N., & Turner, K. (2013). CHICK-FIL-A: A SOCIAL MEDIA CRISIS. Journal Of Critical Incidents, 6137-140.
Soulati, J. (2012). Learning from chick-fil-A: How you can prepare for a PR crisis. Chief Marketer, Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1111740343?accountid=38569
Temin and company; crisis management 1001 -- who survived, who thrived, and who self-destructed over the past year. (2012). Investment Weekly News, , 657. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1030414261?accountid=38569