Social media has brought new challenges to multinational enterprises. Local users canpraise a product and possibly increase brand reputation, they can ask questions aboutreliability, or they can criticize a company and potentially harm reputation. Cultural differences may impact expected responses from companies, especially if they are dealing with safety failures of their products. Globally operating companies have to be aware of local norms in facing a crisis, especially if they come from different cultural backgrounds. This research explores social media reactions to one international company, Tesla, and their response to newsreported about productfailures. Using content analysis and purposeful sampling from China’s Sina Blog (similar to Twitter), comments and responses were gathered on the topic of Tesla’s security crisis for one month. The results show that despite initial negativity in social media response, in the long run, strategies such as ignoring and refusing to apologize may help the company restore some of the lost reputation.
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