Offering an apology is a strategy brands use in response to negative electronic word of mouth. However, its effectiveness is equivocal and may depend on its combination with other strategies. In this paper, the use and the effectiveness of offering an apology in webcare conversations between airlines and complaining customers on Twitter is investigated. In Study 1, a corpus study was conducted to examine whether and how apologies occurred in 480 webcare conversations. Offering an apology was the most frequently used response strategy. Moreover, accommodative strategies were more frequent than defensive strategies. In Study 2, we investigated the effectiveness of apologies separately and combined with a defensive and/or accommodative strategy. The experiment had a 2 (apology: present vs. absent) × 2 (defensive strategy: present vs. absent) × 2 (accommodative strategy: present vs. absent) between-subjects design. Flight passengers (N = 151) assessed a webcare response to a service failure on the airline’s reputation. Although the presence of an apology did not enhance brand reputation, a combination of both a defensive and accommodative strategy did. We conclude that airlines prefer an apology as response to online complaints, but the combination of defensive and accommodative strategies truly protects their reputation.

道歉是品牌针对负面电子口碑而使用的策略。但是，它的有效性是模棱两可的，可能取决于它与其他策略的组合。在本文中，调查了在航空公司与Twitter上抱怨的客户之间的网络维护对话中道歉的用途和有效性。在研究1中，进行了语料库研究，以检查480个网络护理对话中是否以及如何道歉。道歉是最常用的应对策略。此外，适应性策略比防御性策略更为频繁。在研究2中，我们分别调查了道歉的有效性，并结合了防御性和/或调节性策略。该实验的得分为2（道歉：现在vs.缺席）×2（防御策略：现在vs。×2（适应策略：存在与不存在）主体间设计。航班乘客（N  = 151）评估了针对航空公司服务声誉失败的Webcare响应。尽管道歉并不能提高品牌声誉，但结合防御和包容性策略确实可以提高品牌声誉。我们得出的结论是，航空公司更愿意道歉来回应在线投诉，但是防御性和宽松性策略的结合确实可以保护其声誉。