Linking Public Relations' Practices with Corporate Reputation and Trust: An Evidence from Automobile Industry

Abstract

In today's competitive environment, creating reputation and establishing trust among public is most important for any organization. It has become pertinent for organizations to be innovative and use effective tools of communication for promotion of the company as well as its products. The main purpose of this study is to obtain a better understanding of the PR mechanism which automobile manufacturing industry adopts to communicate with its publics (stakeholders) through utilizing PR services. Describing various tools and techniques as used by these companies through qualitative analysis and deductive approach, the research explores how the roles and objectives of PR are defined and how the PR functions & tools used by these companies help them in building corporate reputation and trust. The research is based on exploratory as well as descriptive analysis to help understand the mechanism of PR in general and describe various aspects of Public Relations in Automobile industry respectively. Semi-structured interviews are conducted from 13 respondents who are PR experts belonging to four wheeler local passenger car manufacturing companies of Pakistan which are three in total and PR agencies. Results show that media plays a significant role in influencing and changing perceptions of the target audience, including general public as well as decision makers. The controlled, semi-controlled and uncontrolled PR tools used by companies play a pivotal role in improving graph of these companies to transparently communicate with the ,audience. Further, findings indicate that PR activities are successful in building trust and reputation with the public and the built-in trust it creates results in increased customer loyalty and satisfaction.