CEO’s apology in Twitter: A case study of the fake beef labeling incident by E-Mart

Jaram Park Hoh Kim Meeyoung Cha Jaeseung Jeong Graduate School of Culture Technology, KAIST

Motivation Case

Result All tweets that mentions the word “E-Mart”

The apology has more influence on

decreasing negative sentiment rather than

increasing positive sentiment.

The apology was more effective to CEO’s

followers than non-followers.

LIWC(Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count)

Score:

We conduct a case study using Twitter data to

answer the following:

Should a CEO apologize on social media for the

mistake?

If a CEO apologizes, would it help or hurt the

corporate’s reputations?

Is there a right timing and tone of voice of an

effective apology?

Jul. 27 2010: E-Mart branch was caught

selling imported beef as domestic beef.

Twitter users requested that CEO directly

take care of the issue.

Jul. 28 2010 : CEO apologized on his tweet.

Conclusion

Methodology and Result

Original Text Positive Negative

YongJin Chung apologized on his twitter

yesterday. it's cool. 11.11 0

When I heard fake labeling beef incident,

I 'm really disappointed in E-MART

0 14.29

Exposure Apology

𝒆𝒎𝒐𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅𝒔

𝒕𝒐𝒕𝒂𝒍 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅𝒔

Using social media, companies can analyze consumers' sentiments not only towards brands,

but also specific issues/crisis.

For a better crisis reaction in social media, leaders should build relationship with social media

users before crisis, not after.

Fake beef labeling CEO’s apology