Cultural diversity in international social public relations

Abstract

Social media introduces substantial and pervasive changes to communication between organizations and individuals. This can now significantly impact a company’s reputation, sales, and even survival. But social media and its chances and risks are discussed in most of the existing studies as pure 1:1 relationship. The behavioural recommendations given for companies are mostly stated as universally valid within the universally identical social networks. Differences in perception and usage of social media are considered only partially. This is especially true for soft factors such as the cultural frame. As hypothesis of this paper, this cultural dimension plays an essential role in investigating the chances and boundaries of social media usage as communication and advertising instrument of companies. In this study the companies Adidas, Nike, Haier, Samsung, HTC, Huawei, Toyota, Mercedes Benz, Starbucks and Walmart are investigated in detail.