The role of relationships in public relations: Examining the influence of key public member relational attitudes on behavioral intent

Abstract

Increasingly, scholars and practitioners define the practice of public relations as relationship management. Scholars recently have demonstrated that relationship attitudes can be used to predict key public member satisfaction and intended behavioral outcomes in the telecommunications, banking, and education industries. The investigation reported herein examines the role that relationships play in influencing respondent behavioral intentions in the insurance industry by surveying 62 clients of a medium‐sized full‐service agency. The results indicated that respondent personal, professional, and community relationship attitudes differentiated those who intend to remain loyal to the agency from those who were not or were undecided. The findings suggest that (a) the practice of public relations should continue to evolve toward the relationship management paradigm, (b) practitioners may wish to re‐conceptualize the measurement of public relations outcomes away from measuring effectiveness based on communication flows and toward measuring the influence that public relations activities have on key public member perceptions, attitudes, evaluations, and behaviors, (c) practitioners can demonstrate accountability and justify programmatic initiatives by focusing on the organization‐public relationship, and (d) the role of public relations within the corporate structure should be expanded to managers of the relationships that affect the organization's economic, social, political, and/or cultural well‐being.