6th Februaly, 2014

Elective: Corporate communication WS 2013/2014

Final exam

Name: Takeyuki MatsumotoScore: ____________ / 35 points

1) What do you understand by the term “corporate communication”? Explain clearly. Whatare the key concepts in corporate communication? (6p).

Corporate communication is the process of enabling data and information exchanges betweencorporation and stakeholder who have a straightforward relationship with the corporation. In otherwords, that is the sharing of information within a business. It provide the information to theemployees, suppliers, investors, partners, and customers. It relies heavily on public relations thatis including an company and employee newsletter, communicating with shareholders, clients anddonors, special events planning, employee recruitment, building the corporate brand, and crisismanagement with the news media.

The key concepts in corporate communication is management of perceptions, and creation oftimely dissemination of information. It is important that to communicate effectively and profitably bythe total of a corporation’s efforts. It define the corporate image as means to improve corporateperformance. It is also important that it is a strategic tool for the contemporary corporation to gain acompetitive advantage over its competitors.

2) Give an example of a company mission statement and explain its importance for thiscompany’s image (3p).

Google’s mission statement is to organize the world‘s information and make it universallyaccessible and useful. Google Inc. is the corporate that you would expect as an No.1 internetservices company. This mission statement is important to protect its image and to live up to theexpectations from users. It appeal to users that Google has informations of inexhaustible supply,and they are organized in an easy­to­understand, further the users can use these informationsconveniently and flexibly regardless of time and place. It focused on providing the best userexperience possible.

3) What is the difference between shareholders and stakeholders? Who are thestakeholders of a given company (4p)?

Shareholders are anyone who has financial shares in the company whereas stakeholders areanyone who has interest in company's performance. Stakeholders have an interest and areaffected by a corporation. Stakeholders in a corporation include the employees, the employees'families, suppliers, customers, community, and others.

Shareholders are stakeholders in a corporation, but stakeholders are not always shareholders. Inother words, the shareholders aren't the only party having a stake in the corporation. A shareholderowns part of a company through stock ownership, while a stakeholder is interested in theperformance of a company for reasons other than just stock appreciation. Although shareholdersmay be the largest stakeholders because shareholders are affected directly by a company'sperformance, it has become more commonplace for additional groups to be consideredstakeholders.

Stakeholders is bondholders who would like a solid performance from the company and, therefore,a reduced risk of default. Customers who use a particular good or service, suppliers who get aconsistent revenue stream, and employees who work at the company are also stakeholder.

Some organizations don't have shareholders, but have stakeholders. For example, the Universityof Aizu doesn't have shareholders, but it has many stakeholders: students, the students' families,professors, administrators, employers, Aizu city's taxpayers, the local community, the prefecturecommunity, society in general, custodians, suppliers, etc.

4) What factors influence a given company’s reputation? Give examples of good and badreputation factors (6p).

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) influence a given company’s reputation. How people feelabout a company is based on their perceptions of the CSR. It is important to a corporation's overallreputation. On the other hand, crises are taken as a threat to the organizational reputation. Crisesdamage the reputation and such changes can affect how stakeholders interact with theorganization.

For example, Starbucks maintain a reputation as a company that gives back to society. Followingits vision of sustainability, Starbucks has been moving beyond just an international coffee housebrand to a meaningful organisation. It is committed to helping communities thrive when it comes tothe places we do business. It also committed to offering the highest­quality, ethically purchasedand responsibly produced products. Further it committed to minimizing our environmental footprintand inspiring others to do the same. Starbucks is committed to being a good corporate citizen. Inaddition, it has publicly reported our goals and performance in the area of corporate socialresponsibility since 2001. These CSR influences good reputation to Starbucks.

On the other hand, the cruise ship Costa Concordia, operated by Costa Crociere S.p.A. andowned by Carnival Corp., partially sank on the night of Jan. 13, 2012, after hitting a reef off of theItalian coast and running aground at Isola del Giglio. More than 4,000 people on board had to beevacuated, and more than thirty were confirmed dead. The images of the half­sunken cruise linermade evening news across the world. This crisis raised serious issues over safety practices at theship’s operating company, it damage the reputation of Costa Crociere S.p.A. and Carnival Corp..

5) How do companies communicate internally nowadays? What tools are used? Giveexamples (6p).

Internal communication is a kind of communication with employees within theorganisation. Nowaday, companies communicate internally by new technologies likeInternet blogs and emails. For example, Podcasts is used as useful means of

disseminating corporate information in an efficient and engaging way. Corporateinformation and communication systems (CICS) are also used. It broadcast of corporatedecisions and developments to all employees across the organisation releasinginformation to employees through the intranet, emails. Corporate TV networks, such as thedigital FedEx Television Network or Nokia's digital broadcasting systems, are also used ascommunication channels for reaching employees around the world.

For other example, Yammer is an internal social networking and document storage tool designedfor companies to use for knowledge exchange. When working with Yammer it depends on how yousetup the program. As the administrator you can create different groups for different departmentsso that everyone’s stream does not get cluttered with information that does not apply to them.

For further example, Chatter is a social collaboration tool that allows users to setup profiles, sharestatus updates, and share files in a secure and private environment. Chatter’s basic platform is forcompanies looking to begin sharing information internally. However, Chatter is best used bycompanies that are currently using Salesforce.com as a lead management program. If you have asales team, Chatter is an excellent choice for communicating since it is already integrated withyour Salesforce data. Integration with Salesforce can create a hub for your salespeople to reviewdashboards, discuss leads, and run custom reports.

6) Why do businesses increasingly make use of social media (4p)?

Because social media is a great way to drive repeat business and to attract new customers. It isthe technology that connects people whether it’s to share content or just to chat. Social networks,like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest are the places where social interactions happen,discovering, and sharing. It attract new customers through friends sharing with friends.

Social media has a lots of merits for helping business succeed. At first, social media marketingresults are measurable, much more so than the results of more traditional advertising methods,like print and broadcast. Then, many businesses have seen a drop in marketing expenses bymoving some or all of their marketing efforts to social media networks. Further, it is becoming moreand more relevant for every demographic. Social network usage is steadily increasing among allage ranges and demographics. In fact, 93% of U.S. adult Internet users are now on Facebook. Inaddition, its interactive function has the ability for consumers to actively engage with businessespresents real opportunities for social businesses. Social media sites, in general, are a far morecasual environment that can help build brand awareness, provide bite­size bits of industryinformation, and create communities among your customers. Furthermore, it is timely andimmediate; it allows your organization to spread breaking news quickly, efficiently, and effectively tohundreds, thousands, even millions of people, without having to issue a single press release.

7) What is mean by “cultural customisation” of company websites? What are the stepsinvolved (6p)?

Cultural customisation is a basic step in order to reach a global users with company website, andshould be completed as part of website translation and website localization. While many companiestreat this step as optional, it should be treated as vital things. Website cultural customization canensure the effectiveness of their website to local specific users. Culturally customized websites notonly takes into account the language and locale of the target audience, but also one or more levels

of cultural adaptation: perception, symbolism and behavior.

After website translation and website localization, when a company is going to do culturalcustomization for its website, it should take the following issues into consideration.

The very first step in cultural customization is to make sure that a website will be able to displayany language. The Unicode Standard is the universal character encoding standard for writtencharacters and text. It defines a consistent way of encoding multilingual text. Setting up the rightencoding will ensure that the website's contents will be correctly displayed.

If possible, the company should use a highly flexible or "fluid" design that allows pages to scalebased on what content is in them. It should avoid using fixed sized structures with text in it. Spaceshould be allowed to expand or contract in accordance with the size of the text.

Then, if the company is designing a website for a culturally diverse users, it should carefullyconsider what visual representations it use on your website as their meanings can varyconsiderably from culture to culture. Culture is shaped by our perception of the word, symbolismand behavior.

There are many factors that affect perception. One of the most important and easiest factors toadjust after website localization is color. The company should not perceive colors in the same wayfor people from different cultures.

It also has to think about symbol meaning. There are times when the same symbol could meantwo completely different things from one culture to another. One of the examples is the "thumbs­up"gesture. Many countries recognize this as a sign of approval or confirmation, and a graphicdesigner looking for a graphical way to let users know that they have successfully completed anaction might be tempted to base an icon on this image. However, in modern day Afghanistan, Iraqand parts of Greece, Italy and France this simple gesture can be considered to be very impolite. Infact it is often regarded as the equivalent of the "middle finger salute" used in the UK and USA.

Further it should consider about behavior is defined by the cultural values like Collectivism, PowerDistance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Masculinity­Femininity and High­Low Context. Basic behavior isinfluenced by the tone of the writing in content, images, layout, etc. It has a big influence on any"Call­to­Action", as they are tightly connected.

These steps can be accomplished by doing moderate research on target locales, coding thewebsite of the recommended standards, and adjusting the localized website content to avoidinsulting global users.