3. Taipei Lee-Chi had Lost of 15 Million NTD but did not Receive the Tainted Sesame Pork CakeDuring Refund. (犁記損失達 1500 萬 未 見染餿芝麻肉餅退貨)
9/17
Taipei Lee-Chi’s Owner Cried About Destroying 120 Thousand Cakes. (犁記銷毀 12 萬顆餅 老闆娘 噙淚丟心血)
Damage was caused to the organization by external agent. The organization was regarded as victim
in the crisis.
9/24
Taipei Lee-Chi’s Owner Choked with Sobs on the Reopening Day. (台北犁記重開業 老闆娘感動哽 咽)
Damage was caused to the organization by external agent. The organization was regarded as victim
in the crisis.
The table above showed that the news frames on Taipei Lee-Chi’s tainted oil crisis had a dramatic changed after September 10. Since then, the media stopped depicting Taipei Lee-Chi as a dishonest business. This result also represented a positive effectiveness of Taipei Lee-Chi’s crisis communication strategies.
4.2 Analysis of Official Documents
Materials for the analysis were collected from Taipei Lee-Chi’s official website. From scrutinizing official website, the study can develop a basic understanding of the businesses, and to observe how the organization used its official website as a communication channel in a crisis situation.
The basic functions provided on Taipei Lee-Chi’s official website include: latest news, product list, online order form, media coverage about Lee-Chi, contact Information, hyperlink to YouTube playlist and Taipei Lee-Chi’s Facebook fan page. All the information provided can be translated from Traditional Chinese into Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and English, which indicates that Taipei Lee-Chi is appreciated by customers from different countries. There are many direct links to the shopping cart on Taipei Lee-Chi’s official website, which shows that the main function of the
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website is to enable customers to buy its products online. In other words, Taipei Lee-Chi’s official website serves primarily as an online store.
Aside from the shopping cart function, Taipei Lee-Chi’s official website also offers different sources of information of itself. The information can be categorized into four types: introduction of the store, latest news post by Taipei Lee-Chi, media coverage of the store, and YouTube videos of the store. However, as a visitor who wants to know more about the store, Taipei Lee-Chi’s official website does not provide a complete introduction of itself. For instance, Taipei Lee-Chi claimed that it is a century-old bakery, but visitors cannot find the story about the bakery on the introduction page.
To its target customers, they may want to know which pastry product is the most popular one, but the website has no information to highlight that.
There are in total seven articles posted on the latest news page. The first article was a parking guide posted in 2010. Taipei Lee-Chi did not update this page frequently. To visitors who may want to discover more about the store, Taipei Lee-Chi did not fully utilize its official website to provide enough and updated news about itself. Moreover, it was found that Taipei Lee-Chi had deleted the posts on the latest news page. On September 8, Taipei Lee-Chi had posted an announcement to apologize for making customers worried on its latest news page and Facebook fan page. There was a hyperlink to the apology on official website embedded in the post on Facebook fan page. But after few months, this post was found missing on the latest news page. However, people can still link to the original announcement from the hyperlink embedded in the post on Facebook fan page. Another post which attached a press release from Consumer Ombudsman Officer at Department of Legal Affairs of Taipei City Government on September 10was also found removed from the official
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website. The original post can still be linked by searching the keyword “Taipei Lee-Chi” and
“Consumer Ombudsman Officer” from the search engine.
Therefore, it can be assumed that related posts about tainted oil crisis were moved away from the page by web administrator. In conclusion, Taipei Lee-Chi did not use the latest news page to communicate with customers since it was not frequently updated. And the organization might choose to remove the post which could bring negative impression to the visitors on its official website.
But when it comes to the part of using new media to promote its business, Taipei Lee-Chi is relatively advanced comparing to other traditional bakeries. For example, visitors to Taipei Lee-Chi’s official website can link to its YouTube playlist, which Taipei Lee-Chi had collected 15 videos about the store from news and TV shows. Compared to its ambiguous introduction and rarely
updated news page, Taipei Lee-Chi did a good job on videos clips collection. These video clips of Taipei Lee-Chi represent a positive brand image to visitors who may not kmuch about the store. In addition, these video clips could be very persuasive because they were reported by mass media.
Although Taipei Lee-Chi was more advanced in using new media than other traditional bakeries, it was found that visitors could not have bilateral communication with Taipei Lee-Chi on its official website. For instance, there is no E-mail address on the official website, which may cause
inconvenience for customers who need help but cannot make phone call to the store, such as non-Chinese speaking customers. Moreover, there is no place for visitors to leave message or make comment to the store on the website. Taipei Lee-Chi could have done better on utilizing official website to provide bilateral communication with customers.
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Last but not least, this study also tried to observe how Taipei Lee-Chi use official website as a communication channel in crisis communication. Taipei Lee-Chi had posted two announcements on the “Latest news” page during the crisis, but these announcements were found removed few months later. The first announcement was posted on September 8 to apologize for making customers worried during the tainted oil crisis, but the content of this post did not mention any information about the refund and return policy, nor the contact information for customers who might have
problems of the products. The second post was the press release from Consumer Ombudsman Officer at Department of Legal Affairs of Taipei City Government on September 10. This post was the governmental approval announcing that Taipei Lee-Chi had the right to adjust the return and refund policy. For visitors who may be anxious to know more about the tainted oil crisis, they would fail to find useful information on the official website. These two announcements did not include an
explanation of this crisis event, or a clear return and refund information. Taipei Lee-Chi could have done more in using official website to provide crisis information to the stakeholders.