SNS Effect of the negative event on the Firm Performance: Comparison between Pre and Post SNS media appearance

Abstract

When the negative event is published, the company tends to go through the negative impact on the firm performance. Especially, with the SNS, the negative event is instantly spread on indefinite region so the impact seems bigger than the period before the SNS media appearance. It seems that everyone considers the SNS media impact on the firm performance quite big. However, there has been no empirical study on the impact comparison on the firm performance between pre and post SNS media occurrence periods. This study tries to empirically compare the impact of the negative event on the firm performance between pre and post SNS media appearance. Our study starts from the basic but not verified question; Does really the negative event have more negative impact in the post-SNS-occurrence period than in the pre-SNS-occurrence period?In order to examine the impact of the negative publicity on firm performance in two eras, pre and post SNS media appearance, we used CAR (Cumulative Abnormal Resturns) model. By using this model, we could verify the statistical significance of cumulative abnormal returns in market between before and after the events. For event samples, we focused on food manufacturers and collected the negative events from 1991 to 2003 for pre-SNS occurrence period, and from 2010 to 2013 for post- SNS occurrence period. Based on the listed food companies at KOSPI, we researched Naver News Library (newslibrary.naver.com) and Naver News (news.naver.com) for all the individual negative events published for both periods. Firm returns data were collected from TS 2000 (KOCO Info) and market portfolio data were collected from KRX Exchange. Through our empirical analysis, our finding is interesting to note that the type of events differently influences on the firm performance. With the SNS, the health-related events have influence on the firm performance ‘after the event day’ whereas the company behavior trust events have influence ‘before the event day’. Our findings have implications for management. When a negative event directly related to or threatening customers or their life such as health, it is crucial to fix up the situation right after the event occurs. On the other hand, when a negative event is not publicly available information such as company behavior trust, it is important for marketers to strengthen the firms’ trust reputation and control the bad WOM before the event.