Samsung's Crisis Communication - Cases of Smartphone Burning in 2016

Korisnici proizvoda i brendova u današnje doba, kada su sve informacije nadohvat ruke, obrazovaniji su nego ikada i kompanije su shvatile da se moraju još više prilagođavati korisnicima. Jedna takva prilagodba dovela je do jedne od najvećih tehnoloških kriza u području mobilne telefonije u posljednjih nekoliko godina. U želji da zadovolji sve potrebe korisnika i bude brži od konkurencije južnokorejska kompanija Samsung isporučila je neispravne modele svog tada, najnovijeg pametnog telefona Galaxy Note 7. Svrha ovog rada bilo je istražiti načine na koje je Samsung komunicirao u vrijeme krize te kako im je pošlo za rukom svega nekoliko mjeseci nakon krize rušiti rekorde prodaje sa novim modelom pametnog telefona. Glavna metodologija u ovom radu je analiza medijskog izvještavanja. U radu je odgovoreno na nekoliko istraživačkih pitanja: koliko je kriza naštetila ugledu Samsunga i na koji način je komunicirano s medijima i korisnicima. Hipoteze koje su prije istraživanja postavljene bile su da kriza nije nepovratno narušila Samsungov imidž te da je komuniciranje provedeno uspješno, što je ovim radom i potvrđeno. Radom se željelo istražiti krizno komuniciranje multinacionalne kompanije u krizi te se željelo provjeriti je li proces rebrendiranja u kojem je kompanija prije početka krize bila prestao ili se on potiho, čak i kroz krizno komuniciranje nastavio. Nadalje, izvučeni su zaključci o kriznom komuniciranju Samsunga i uočeni su koraci kriznog komuniciranja koji se mogu prenijeti i na druge kompanije i krize zbog toga što su jedan od temelja kriznog komuniciranja. Product and brand users nowadays, when all the information comes in hand, are more educated that ever and companies have realized that they have to adapt more to users. One such adaptation has led to one of the biggest technological crises in the area of mobile telephony in recent years. In the desire to meet all customers needs and to be faster that the competition the South Korean company Samsung delivered malfunctioning models of its latest smartphone Galaxy Note 7. The purpose of this paper was to explore how Samsung communicated in times of crisis and how did they manage to get sales record with the new smartphone model just a few months after the crisis. The paper deals with several research questions such as: how much the crisis has harmes Samsung`s reputation and how they communicated crisis with media and customers. The hypotheses that were made prior to the research were that the crisis did not irretrievably distort Samsung`s image and that the communication was successful, which was confirmed by this work. The paper sought to investigate the crisis communication of a multinational company in crisis and wanted to check whether the rebranding process which company started before the crisis has stopped or the company continued with rebranding even during crisis. Furhermore, conclusions on crisis communication of Samsung have been drawn and the steps of crisis communication have been noted that can be transmitted to other companies in crisis because they are one of the cornerstones of crisis communication.