Things look rather bleak for Samsung at the moment. Within weeks of launching its flagship smartphone, the Galaxy Note 7, the company had to recall all of the more than 3 million devices it had sold, after reports of overheating and exploding batteries. Soon after, it halted production and scrapped the product entirely. All told, current estimates indicate the recall’s cost will exceed $6 billion (with one estimate even higher). But the greater concern is about the long-term hit on Samsung’s brand. After all, it is one of the most valuable global brands. Branding consultancy Interbrand estimated Samsung’s 2016 brand value at $51.8 billion.
Many prognosticators have raised red flags, suggesting that competitors will gleefully poach away large swathes of Samsung’s customers. One analyst predicted that Apple alone would gain 5–7 million new iPhone users. What is worse, these switches could take hold beyond smartphones as consumers join the Apple product ecosystem.
How concerned should Samsung be about the long-term harm to its brand from the Note 7 crisis? Not as much as the doomsayers would like us to believe. In particular, there are three reasons why Samsung will recover from the Note 7 crisis quickly and without much collateral damage.
A large, loyal base of existing customers insulates the brand. We have seen this movie before. In 2009 and 2010, Toyota recalled over 8 million vehicles globally after defects led to dozens of driver fatalities and serious injuries. Experts predicted long-term, irreversible brand damage. But when we conducted a survey of Toyota owners in early 2010, we saw a different story. By and large, the owners were highly satisfied with their vehicles. Despite the recall, they indicated they would have no problem buying another Toyota in the future and considered it one of the most reliable automotive brands. We called this the “brand insulation effect,” arguing that a large,loyal customer base insulated Toyota from rapid loss of market share.
The same is true of Samsung. In the second quarter of 2016 alone it sold over 78 million smartphones worldwide. If we count all the electronic appliances it sells, the company’s customer base is over a billion people strong. And recent signs are encouraging: When given the choice of a refund or another Note 7 in the recall’s early days (before the product was killed), 90% of customers chose another Note 7. Some Samsung superfans are still holding on to their Note 7s despite the risk of overheating. Given strong customer satisfaction with the Note line, plus loyalty to other Samsung products, this customer base will put the Note 7 fiasco behind it quite quickly.
Geographically identified brands bounce back quickly. The second thing that Samsung has going for it is the national support of South Korean consumers, who see the brand as a source of national pride. Evidence suggests that beleaguered brands that are strongly rooted in a particular heritage are able to shrug off product recalls much faster than those that are not. This is because local customers are much quicker to forgive and to give the brand a second chance. And these effects spill over to other customer groups.
Take the case of Volkswagen. Less than two months after the emissions scandal broke in 2015, German consumers were already ready to forgive the company and look past its transgressions. In a national survey, 65% Germans believed that Volkswagen still built outstanding cars and that the emissions scandal was overblown. Less than a year later, the company had returned to profitability.
In the U.S., Texas-based Blue Bell Creameries recalled its ice cream due to Listeria contamination in its and its suppliers’ plants three different times over a course of 16 months. Yet Texans remained staunch buyers, stocking up each time the ice cream returned to grocery store shelves. They were willing to risk their health to do so. In an interview with a Houston TV station, one customer said, “I know the different symptoms with Listeria, so I’m hoping that I won’t catch it. It’s more of a faith thing.”
The Note 7 crisis is limited to a single Samsung product and is self-contained. The third factor that makes the Note 7 crisis relatively benign is that it remains entirely self-contained so far. Although the source of the problem is still unclear, the overheating problem clearly does not extend to other Samsung smartphones, let alone to its other electronic appliances. What is more, the company has been emphatic inexplaining this dividing line to its customers and in decisively ending production of the defective Note 7. Academic research shows that consumers are receptive to such claims and actions after product recalls. They tend to quickly return to their pre-crisis patronage of the brand.
There is one important caveat to these optimistic predictions about Samsung’s future. If the Note 7 fiasco doesn’t turn out to be one-off aoccurrence and if product design blunders and recalls spread to other Samsung products, all bets are off. Likewise, if the Note 8 launch next year is anything but flawless, the brand could suffer seriously.
But for now, Samsung is already looking past the recall. And that is what it should be doing.
Utpal M. Dholakia is the George R. Brown Professor of Marketing at Rice University’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business.
This article is about CRISIS MANAGEMENT
最近三星公司的日子真的非常的不好过啊！据报道，因为过热导致电池爆炸，三星不得不召回他们前几周发布的旗舰机Note 7，300万台售出的Note 7将要被召回。没过多久，三星就停产了这款手机并将这款手机的库存全部销毁。据估计，此次召回将使得三星损失60亿美元（甚至更高）。但是人们最关心的是这次的事件将会对三星这个品牌的长期发展造成多大的的打击。不管怎么说，三星也是全球最具价值的品牌之一。品牌价值评估公司Interbrand估计三星2016年的品牌价值在518亿美元左右。
此次爆炸事件后，许多的预言家们早已发出危险信号，三星的竞争对手们将会从三星手中抢来不少的顾客。一位分析师预测，苹果公司将会因此增加500万到700万新的顾客。更糟的是，这样的局势可能会蔓延到智能手机之外的领域，因为人们会纷纷加入苹果产品的生态系统，
Note 7爆炸事件后，三星如何关注此次危机对其品牌的长期危害呢？悲观者想让我们相信整个事件将会给三星带来非常严重的后果，然而，事情并不是他们想象的那样的，三星将会从此次危机中迅速恢复，而且不会损失太多。
一个很大的忠诚的现有顾客群体，会使一个品牌保温。其实，和此次危机类似的事件我们早已见过。早在2009到2010年期间，因为瑕疵品造成了许多严重的交通事故，丰田就全球性的召回了八万台汽车。在那时候，专家们也预测丰田的长期发展将遭到极大地打击。但是当我们在2010年对丰田车主进行调查时，我们看到了一个不一样的故事。总的来说，丰田车主们对自己的爱车都有着极高的评价。尽管车子被召回了，他们仍然表示会在以后再买一辆丰田车，并且，车主们认为丰田是世界上最值得信赖的品牌之一。我们称这个现象为“品牌保温效应”，总之，忠诚的顾客群避免了丰田迅速失去市场份额。
同样的事情也会在三星上发生。仅在2016年的第二季度，三星就在全世界卖出超过7800万台手机。如果我们统计一下三星卖出的全部电子产品的数量的话，那么三星公司的客户群就超过了十亿人了。最近的迹象也令人激动：在Note 7 召回的早期（也就是Note 7完全停产之前），对召回的Note 7，三星可以提供退款或者更换一部行的Note 7的服务，大多数人都选择了更换手机。尽管存在过热的风险，一些三星的超级粉丝仍然在使他们的Note 7 。消费者对三星Note系列产品有着如此强的满意度，再加上对其他产品的忠诚，这些顾客群将会帮助三星很快的度过这次的Note 7 危机。
地理位置上对品牌的认同会使得品牌迅速反弹。三星能度过此次危机的第二个理由是有韩国对三星的民族支持，韩国民众将三星视为他们民族的骄傲。证据表明，强烈扎根于特定遗产的品牌能比那些不这样做的品牌更快的摆脱产品召回带来的危机。这是因为品牌所在地的顾客，会更加快的原谅他们犯下的错误，并且给他们第二次机会，而且这些影响会蔓延到其他顾客群。
以大众汽车公司为例，在2015年污染物排放丑闻曝光后不到两个月，德国民众就已经打算原谅大众汽车公司了，并忽略这件事的不良影响。在一次民意调查中，65%的德国人认为大众仍然能生产世界上最杰出的车，并且认为此次的污染物丑闻有些夸大其词。不到一年，大众公司就又开始盈利了。
在美国，位于德克萨斯州的蓝铃乳制品商店，因为他们使用的原材料植物中有李斯特菌，所以在16个月内3次召回他们生产的冰淇淋。然而德克萨斯人民仍然是忠诚的购买者。他们也许会因此伤害到自己的健康。在一次休斯顿电台的采访中，一位顾客表示：“我清楚感染李斯特菌的不同症状，所以我十分希望自己不会感染。这更是一种信念的事情。”
Note 7 危机只是限制三星的单个产品上，是一个独立事件。三星能够迅速从此次危机恢复的第三个理由是，这款手机目前仍然是完全独立的。尽管导致此次危机的问题还不清楚，三星明确表明过热问题并不会延伸到三星的其他手机和其他电子产品中。不仅如此，三星公司也极力解释这条产品线和其他产品线是完全独立的，并且目前已经完全停掉了这条生产线。学者报告表明，顾客是可以接受三星公司在召回手机之后的处理方法的。这些消费者也在快速回到危机发生之前来，回到三星这个品牌来。
这是对三星公司未来的乐观的预测，但我们还是有一个提醒。如果Note 7的惨败最终被证明不是单个的问题，如果是产品设计的问题，那么将会波及到三星其他的产品，那么所有的乐观的预测将失效了。同样的，如果明年Note 8 的发布漏洞百出，那么这个品牌将真的会受到非常严重的打击。
但至少现在，三星已经逐渐摆脱了召回事件所带来的影响。当然，这个结果本来也应该就是这样的。