Marketing Public Relations
1 Tesco and the Horsemeat Saga
History has repeated itself. The Horsemeat Scandal is definitely no new phenomenon in Britain. An article by Jim Reilly (2013) on Daily Mail noted that the 'UK food chain was rocked by the same crisis 65 years ago'. Though it was not mentioned how the crisis was managed and handled in 1948, it is pretty obvious that the 'legacy of horsemeat scandal hangs over [the] food industry' (Gavin Megaw, 2014), this time involving a string of supermarket chains in the UK. Although national environment secretary Owen Paterson has confirmed that the beef products which contain horsemeat 'pose no health risk' (BBC, 2013), there has been much controversy about the unethical behaviour of mixing horsemeat to prolong the shelf life of processed meat and mislabelling food (Judith Woods, 2013).
Both past and contemporary literature have focused on the importance of maintaining a positive corporate image and reputation, and delivering promised corporate behaviour and standards; how identity crisis can lead to adverse consequences; the importance and cruciality of businesses to react and respond strategically to the right publics at the right time and so on and so forth- it is even evident, in real situations whereby failure to manage crisis would affect businesses detrimentally in terms of sales volume, consumer loyalty and trust, revamp of the management and even to the extent of causing a business to collapse. Take the major British jewellery company Ratners Group and its Chief Executive, Gerald Irving Ratner for example. Even until today, the famous speech which Gerald Ratner gave to a private function more than a decade ago is still remembered as one of the many other well-known gaffes (The Telegraph, 2007; The Marketing Diary, 2012). In the case of the horsemeat scandal in Tesco, however, there was a big hoo-ha about it in the papers, all over the internet and social media as soon as the news unfolded. But as Stephan Shakespeare (2013) would
History has repeated itself. The Horsemeat Scandal is definitely no new phenomenon in Britain. An article by Jim Reilly (2013) on Daily Mail noted that the 'UK food chain was rocked by the same crisis 65 years ago'. Though it was not mentioned how the crisis was managed and handled in 1948, it is pretty obvious that the 'legacy of horsemeat scandal hangs over [the] food industry' (Gavin Megaw, 2014), this time involving a string of supermarket chains in the UK. Although national environment secretary Owen Paterson has confirmed that the beef products which contain horsemeat 'pose no health risk' (BBC, 2013), there has been much controversy about the unethical behaviour of mixing horsemeat to prolong the shelf life of processed meat and mislabelling food (Judith Woods, 2013).
Both past and contemporary literature have focused on the importance of maintaining a positive corporate image and reputation, and delivering promised corporate behaviour and standards; how identity crisis can lead to adverse consequences; the importance and cruciality of businesses to react and respond strategically to the right publics at the right time and so on and so forth- it is even evident, in real situations whereby failure to manage crisis would affect businesses detrimentally in terms of sales volume, consumer loyalty and trust, revamp of the management and even to the extent of causing a business to collapse. Take the major British jewellery company Ratners Group and its Chief Executive, Gerald Irving Ratner for example. Even until today, the famous speech which Gerald Ratner gave to a private function more than a decade ago is still remembered as one of the many other well-known gaffes (The Telegraph, 2007; The Marketing Diary, 2012). In the case of the horsemeat scandal in Tesco, however, there was a big hoo-ha about it in the papers, all over the internet and social media as soon as the news unfolded. But as Stephan Shakespeare (2013) would