PR Functions Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

PR Functions - Case Study Example PR performs both organizational and societal functions influencing internal workers and wife target audience. Organizational detention involves workers and investors, management policies and the Board of Directors, etc. At this level, PR bridges information gaps in distribution channels, help coordinate the total marketing system, and adjust products and services to customer needs. Press releases and investors information are integral components of the communications mix (Apple Home Page 2008). Self-image is a function of societal norms. Group membership and group belonging relate directly to self-esteem and favorable self-image; acceptance and the grant of status by various organizations embellish the phenomenal self. The ability of groups to foster the development of more favorable self-images encourages belonging; the ability of products, symbols, services, communications, and other aspects of the marketing program to enhance the self-image encourages consumption behavior. One of the bases for understanding consumer behavior in its psychological and sociological dimensions, the self-image concept adds an important perspective to economic theories of consumption and is directly related to motivation (Gillin, 2007). At the societal level, Apple addresses all stakeholders including society and potential customers, IT professionals and economists, etc. At this level, the value of information about product characteristics varies directly with buyers' costs of search. When transactions and search costs are sufficiently small, buyers search more intensively and the additional advantage of intensive specialized search diminishes. The opposite is true for those with high search costs. Indeed, if search costs are sufficiently high it may not even pay to enter the differentiated products market at all (Gillin, 2007). The value of attribute information also depends on the difference between each consumer's preferences and market availabilities. If individual consumers exhibit little dispersion in their preferences and search costs, the gross value of advertising product characteristics is small and its net social value may be even negative, for the same reason it was in some of the examples in the sectio n above on advertising and perceptions. Since advance knowledge of attributes allows customers to specialize search activities in the most preferred varieties, the value of catering to particular groups is correspondingly greater when there is greater dispersion in tastes among buyers (Apple Home Page 2008). The aim of PR is to maintain relations with stakeholders and create a unique image of the company. The value and importance of PR is that a buyer cannot afford to investigate all of the alternative qualities of the products in the market. If Apple can increase profit and sales by offering a genuinely superior design and price in comparison with the existing configuration, there remains a possibility of accomplishing a similar result by changing buyers' perceptions of an existing good. So far as individual firms are concerned, these activities have the same initial effects on sales and profit as were examined in the preceding section. But the nature of market equilibrium and the social consequences of such actions are markedly different (Apple Home Page