Amity School of Business

Module 5

Research In Public Relations

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What is Research?
This is a set of activities intended to identify
new ideas that have the potential to result in
new goods and services.
Marketing Research - Marketing research
is the process of systematically gathering,
recording, and analyzing data concerning a
particular marketing problems.
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Use of Marketing Research

• To obtain information that is not otherwise
available to decision makers.
• It is an intermittent rather than a continual
source of marketing information.
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Steps of Marketing research

• Define the problem
• Make a preliminary investigation
• Plan the research
• Gather factual information
• Interpret the information
• Reach a conclusion
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Types of Research Sources

• Primary Data

• Secondary Data
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Two types of Research

• Quantitative Research: Uses survey based on

representatives sample of the population or target group

• Qualitative Research: Follows in-depth

,unstructured exploration with either small group of
individuals or with individuals on one to one basis
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Research Tools
• Questionnaires
• Psychological tests
• Mechanical devices
• Qualitative measures
 Importance of Research
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of Business

Public Relations Management

• Public relations professionals often find
themselves in the position of having to
convince management to fund research,
or to describe the importance of research
as a crucial part of a departmental or
project budget.
• Research is an essential part of public
relations management. Public relations
management.
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• Research makes communication two-

way by collecting information from publics
rather than one-way, which is a simple
dissemination of information.
• Research allows us to engage in dialogue
with publics, understanding their beliefs
and values, and working to build
understanding on their part of the internal
workings and policies of the organization.
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• Scholars find that two-way communication is generally more effective than one-way
communication.
• Research makes public relations activities strategic by ensuring that communication
is specifically targeted to publics who want, need, or care about the
information. Without conducting research, public relations is based on experience or
instinct, neither of which play large roles in strategic management. This type of
research prevents us from wasting money on communications that are not reaching
intended publics or not doing the job that we had designed them to do.
• Research allows us to show results, to measure impact, and to refocus our efforts
based on those numbers. For example, if an initiative is not working with a certain
public we can show that ineffectiveness statistically, and the communication can be
redesigned or eliminated. Thus, we can direct funds toward more successful
elements of the public relations initiative.
• Without research, public relations would not be a true management function. It would
not be strategic or a part of executive strategic planning, but would regress to the
days of simple press agentry, following hunches and instinct to create publicity.
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PR Research
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Public Relations as Process:

R.A.C.E.
Research

Evaluation Action

Communication
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Importance of research in PR
• Effective PR is a process, therefore the essential first step
must be research, which is widely accepted by PR
professionals as an integral part of planning, launch,
program development and evaluation process.
• PR involves sending out realistic messages, that will
create a good relationship between an organization and
its various stake holders.
• Through marketing research, the PR officer will have a
perfect idea of target audience and consumer
requirement.
• Marketing research helps an organization to know the
reasons behind products not being accepted by public
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Need for PR Research

1. Planning & setting of goals

2. Initiating PR action plans

3. Identifying & prioritizing public relation

activities

4. Evaluating results of planned PR programme

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Advantages of PR research
• Enables management to formulate policies that are
acceptable to public

• Produces suggestions that can lead to better products,

services and relationship.

• Makes management aware of existing & potential

problems & thus be helpful in determining objectives &
strategies of PR program

• It can reveals the reasons for public apathy

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Effective Corporate Campaign

A campaign that is not primarily for the sales
or marketing of a company’s brand or
product. But it may align for longer term
increases in the sales of the organization’s
product by general or indirect means.
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Stages of effective corporate

campaign
• This is who we are
• This is what we do
• This is what we can do for you
• Corporate campaign is more concerned with the
general image of the organization, rather than its
particular product. It is also a method of
communicating with target audience.
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Objective of corporate campaign

• To build awareness of an organization’s identity
• Improve an understanding of organization’s area of
business
• Over come poor attitude towards an organization
• Explain corporate philosophy and policies
• Enhance an organization’s image
• Provide a unified view of an organization to its
employees
• Illustrate achievement
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Benefits of Corporate campaign

• Increase the likely hood of people to buy
company’s products and services
• Increase the wiliness of investors to buy share in
the company
• Its leads to quicker recovery from a crisis
situation
• Its leads to great ease of acceptance when
company launch new products and services
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Evaluation model
Research methods

OUTCOME
Change
Quantitative surveys
behaviour
Focus groups
Change
attitudes

Understand messages Interviews

OUTTAKE Response analysis
Retain messages
Messages in the media Media content analysis

Message presentation Expert analysis

OUTPUT Message content Feedback
Media selection Observations
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Unified model
INPUT
Planning and preparation

OUTPUT
Messages and targets

IMPACT
Awareness and information

EFFECT
Attitude and motivation

RESULT
Behaviour and action
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Content analysis
• In PR, content analysis is a familiar frequently used tool
for determining what is being reported in media.
• Content analysis use in determining market trends,
providing valuable insights for future. Content analysis
also helps in analyze historical documents and literature.
• Commercial clipping services are frequently hired to
provide the practitioner with packets of press clippings
and broadcast monitor reports.
• Public relations firms increasingly help clients anticipate
issues by using the services of issues-tracking firms and
by conducting their own content analysis.
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Media Tracking
• It is a well-known fact that broadcast media reaches far
more consumers than print media possibly could; though
internet PR is gaining a large portion of the market
share, it is still a well-recognized fact that television and
radio broadcasting reaches more consumers on a daily
basis.
• Media tracking is the most effective and time-efficient
way to measure local, national and global press
coverage.
• Media tracking service for PR measurement
automatically aggregates and analyzes
viewership/readership data for all news clips — and then
instantly displays media analysis reports.
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• VMS (Video Monitoring Services) is widely understood to

be the premier source of integrated media intelligence
and solutions to marketing, advertising and public
relations professionals worldwide. VMS is essentially the
standard content provider and authority in the
advertising, PR, and analysis domain.
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Public Opinion Research

Public opinion research is the aggregate of
individual attitudes or beliefs. Public opinion also
defined as the collective opinion of different
people.
• Quantitative measurement of opinion distributions
• Investigation of the internal relationships among the
individual opinions
• Description or analysis of the public role of public
opinion;
• Study the communication media that disseminate the
ideas on which opinions are based