Trust Repair in China’s Milk Tea Industry: Crisis Types, Response Strategies, and Linguistic Realizations

Chinese milk tea consumption is characterized by strong social engagement and a high degree of mediatization. This means that when crises occur, related incidents can rapidly escalate on social media, eroding public trust and undermining brand reputation and market performance. However, existing research on trust repair has paid relatively limited attention to emerging industries like the milk tea sector. This study adopts a multidisciplinary paradigm, integrating Image Repair Theory, Situational Crisis Communication Theory, the organizational trust model, and a linguistic approach to examine the dominant crisis types faced by Chinese milk tea companies, their trust repair goals, and corresponding linguistic realizations. The findings show that human error product harm, technical error accidents, and management misjudgments are the primary crisis types faced by Chinese milk tea companies. Across crisis types, these companies consistently prioritize repairing the benevolence dimension of trust. To restore this and other trust dimensions, they employ differentiated response strategies; notably, corrective action is necessary in nearly all crisis types. Chinese milk tea companies favor strategies such as admitting, appreciation, requesting, and exhortation. Further analysis shows that these strategies facilitate trust repair by constructing positive corporate images and mitigating responsibility attribution. By situating trust repair practices in the Chinese cultural context, this study extends Situational Crisis Communication Theory and Image Repair Theory by broadening the typology of crisis types and trust repair strategies. The paper concludes by offering practical suggestions for crisis management and trust rebuilding in similar industries.