A Contrastive Study On Rapport Management Via Apologies Between American And Chinese Internet Companies

As a commonly adopted crisis response strategy in the business field,apology has been extensively investigated.However,there has been relatively inadequate comparative studies on corporate apologies in the Internet industry after data breach crises between America and China.In fact,the Internet companies involved in data breach crises will not only suffer direct economic losses but also incur indirect losses such as rapport damage.One way to reduce further rapport damage can be realized by issuing an effective apology statement.Therefore,it is necessary to investigate these naturally occurring data.Specifically speaking,this study aims: 1)to compare the differences in the frequency and use of apology strategies;2)to explore how rapport is enhanced through these strategies;and 3)to investigate the factors that may contribute to the differences.To address these questions,30 American and 30 Chinese statements have been collected as the sample data.Drawing upon Spencer Oatey(2008)’s rapport management framework,this study first manually identified the strategies in the statements and calculated the frequency,and then adopted Chi-square tests to quantitatively analyse the data.The results show that despite the similarities in the frequency of sympathetic expression,reassurance and bolstering,there are differences in the frequency of explanation or account,responsibility admittance,compensation,further contact,intensifiers,repetition,conditional clauses,downtoners and deixis.These strategies play different roles in enhancing rapport,either by dealing with face sensitivities or by addressing sociality rights and obligations.The differences in the frequency of the strategies may result from factors including contextual assessment norms,sociopragmatic principles,pragma-linguistic conventions,fundamental cultural values,and inventory of rapport management strategies.This study has both theoretical and practical implications.Theoretically,it sheds light on the research on apologies by presenting an exampler of apologies for data breach crises in the American and Chinese Internet companies.Practically,the findings would provide feasible solutions for business practitioners on how to enhance rapport when similar situations occur in different cultural backgrounds.