Project Management - Public Relations and Advertising in China - Essay Example

?Research of Public Relations and Advertising in China Introduction As businesses grow and mature, the goal of each one is making a profit. This, of course happens by means of selling a good or service of the company to a third party. This requires fulfilling several conditions. First of all, a successful company should have a good enough image for its customers to be returning and loyal. That is the task of public relations. Secondly, a company should make end users aware of the existence and benefits of its goods or services, as well as the company itself. That is the task of advertising. In order to expand sales and gain profit companies have use advertisement through various means of communication. This economic activity helps to spread the message across the target market for goods or services of the business. At the same time, though advertising can be said to be an element of public relations activities, advertising itself does not always mean public relations. The two concepts, though have much in common, contain many differences as well. Public Relations work for the improvement of company’s image, building public awareness about the company and its activities, as well as effective promotion of certain offers of the company or outstanding features of a product or service. So, public relations refers to “strategic communication that different types of organizations use for establishing and maintaining symbiotic relationships with relevant publics” (Sriramesh, 2009, p. xxxi). As for advertising, it is currently defined as a communication tool “directed towards specific target customers in order to carry the message regarding a particular product, service or ideas, meaningfully and persuasively with a view to achieve certain specific objectives such as, to establish brand loyalty, expansion of the existing markets, increased sales volume, etc.” (Kumar & Mittal, 2002, p. 2). Therefore, it can be determined that advertising is a tool, and thus a narrow and strictly targeted aspect of public relations, which, in its turn, combines advertising with other activities in order to form strategic communication. However, it is interesting to find out whether the classical definitions checked by the developed markets play the same role in the developing markets, such as China. The country has been admitted to the World Trade Organization (Walters & Samiee, 2003) and, therefore, became an attractive market for many multinational corporations. While the effect of media is suspect of influencing the relationships of different individuals, the targeting of commercial advertising and PR activities toward consumers and strategies employed in order to reach Chinese audience is the primary focus in this study. The fact that media outlets became so widespread in Chinese society serves as the impetus for studying in a more narrow scope the relationship between commercial advertising and PR, and the viewer/consumer in media commercial programming. In addition, the given work aims at analyzing techniques and strategies of advertising agencies used to influence Chinese consumers. Research questions Though Chinese market can be considered relatively new for western companies, it does not experience any lack of attention and is already flooded with foreign companies and, as a result, advertising and PR. However, thought the market is attractive, it has certain peculiarities and unique characteristics that should be considered by entering businesses when trying to become popular in China. Therefore, the given research is trying to clarify the following aspects of public relations and advertising in China: How in particular and to what extent public relations in China differs from advertising and what particular signs make a difference between the two communication activities in the Chinese market. What major communication means, tools and techniques Chinese and multinational companies use in China to effectively deliver the message to the target audience and how effective particular strategies and techniques are. What are the most effective communication tools in the Chinese market, as well as how effective particular types of advertising (advertising strategies) are in China. Theoretical framework The primary research methodology used for this study is a survey. Survey comes from the objectivism of epistemological tradition. Crotty (1998) defined objectivism as an epistemological view that exist as a meaningful entity, independently of consciousness and experience, that has truth and meaning residing in it as objects, so that careful research can attain those objective truth and meaning. William (2006) indicated survey research is one of the most important areas of measurement in applied social research. The main purpose of a social survey, which will be conducted for the purpose of this research, is to collect sufficient data to address the primary research questions. Leon et al (2003) outline two main goals of conducting a survey: describing a population somewhere in the world and/or testing a hypothesis (educated guess) about a relationship that is expected to exist within a population. According to the research objectives of this work, survey is a key data gathering device. The information that can be collected with the help of a survey will help to answer the research questions. The most common form of a survey is a questionnaire. A questionnaire used in a survey will require a researcher to choose a sample population for the research – a certain number of responders to reply to a number of standard questions that can make a comparison inquired by the survey. Standard questions should be used in each questionnaire in order to ensure they can be analyzed properly. It is important to keep the questionnaires as short as possible, asking only those questions that will provide relevant information. Due to the nature of the data, content analysis is also an appropriate method for collecting the data needed to address the research questions. “Content analysis is a technique for gathering and analyzing the content of text. The content refers to words, meanings, pictures, symbols, ideas, themes, or any message that can be communicated” (Neuman, 2003, p. 310). The “content” in this study is found in the commercial advertisements and PR messages of the businesses operating in China. So, meaning, content and intention carried by messages can be analyzed with the help of content analysis. Since the given research is related to communications, content analysis, according to Krippendorff (2004) is a very appropriate research method for the given case. Furthermore, “content analysis is a research technique for the objective, systematic, and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication. It is a phase of information processing in which communication content is transformed through objective and systematic application of categorization rules, into data that can be summarized and compared” (Holsti, 1969, p. 3). Methodology The given research will try to determine how in particular and public relations in China differs from advertising and what major communication means, tools and techniques Chinese and multinational companies use in China to effectively deliver the message to the target audience. Since the given study will be a quantitative research based on the questionnaires filled out by the sample population, statistical analysis will be used for interpreting the received information. Most of the information obtained in the course of the research will be secondary data received from the sample population, while some will be primary data gathered form advertisers directly. So, this work will be a consultancy-based report that uses both primary and secondary data. Design Case study approach will be incorporated in the work – an analysis of PR and advertising activities of a few companies operating in the Chinese market will be conducted. Company profiles will be compiled with the purpose of analyzing the strategies and techniques they use in their advertising and PR material for influencing the target population. A structured questionnaire is to be used for gathering data from secondary sources – a sample population of people who view the companies’ advertising regularly. The target group for the study will be identified when formulating the questionnaire. Research methods Survey research is the most commonly used descriptive methods in educational research and gather data from respondents thought to be representative of large or small population and this method with be used in the presented research along with the case study approach. Content analysis of PR and advertising messages will be used to analyze text, expressions and images from the perspective of their influence onto human mind (Krippendorff, 2004). Analysis The discussion of research question will be based on the analysis of activities of a few companies operating in the Chinese market. This will help to identify what methods and techniques the companies use for their PR and advertising activities. In addition, an analysis of the outcomes will also be based on questionnaires filled out by the people at whom such activities are targeted, so that it is possible to identify which PR and advertising message are more effective in China. Ethical considerations For ethical considerations all the information provided in the research will be used with the permission of the people participated in the surveys and filling out the questionnaires. References will be provided for copyrighted materials and gathered by third parties statistical information. References Crotty, M.(1998). The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and perspective in the research process. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin. Holsti, O.R. (1969). Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities. Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley. Krippendorff, K. (2004). Content analysis: an introduction to its methodology. 2nd edition. Newbury Park, CA, SAGE. Kumar, N. & Mittal, R. (2002). Advertising Management. Anmol Publications PVT. LTD. Leon, J., Brown,W., Ruch, L., & Johnson, T. (2003). Survey research: in-person, mail, telephone and web methods. Honolulu,HI: Streamline Surveys Inc. Neuman, W. (2003). Social Research Methods - Qualitative and Quantitative approaches, 5th edition. Pearson Education. Sriramesh, K. (2009). The global public relations handbook: theory, research, and practice. Taylor & Francis. Walters, G. & Samiee, S. (2003). Executive Insights: Marketing Strategy in Emerging markets: The Case of China. Journal of International Marketing, 11 (1): 97–106. William.M. (2006). Survey Research. SocialResearchMethods.net. Retrieved from http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/survey.htm Read More