When an Organizational Message Resonates With Personal Values of Publics: Implications for Strategic Communication Management

Abstract

Identifying and understanding key audiences are the most essential process in strategic communication management to tailor messages to avoid misinterpretation and, more important, to engage in effective communication with key audiences to understand their values. The purpose of this study is to apply the concept of value proximity to examine its effects on people's attitudes toward an organization. To do so, this study adopted the notion of conceptual fluency to examine the moderating role of personal values, such as pro-environment versus pro-development. The key finding of this study is that individual publics' company attitudes are significantly enhanced by the degree of value proximity in organizational messages. The implications of the findings of this study are that the same message can be interpreted differently by various people, depending on factors such as prior exposure to certain messages (priming), personal values of publics, and the degree of association between the two (value proximity). These findings highlight the importance of understanding target audiences' values for strategic development of communication messages.