Browsing by Author "Legesse, Ayele"

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    The Practice of Marketing Public Relations in Ethiopian Airlines Group
    (AAU, 2021-09) Legesse, Ayele; Mochona, Samuel(PhD)
    The notion of Marketing Public Relations began to emerge in marketing communications arena since 1993, when Harris defined it as “it is the process of planning, executing and evaluating programs that encourage purchase and consumer satisfaction through credible communication of information and impressions that identify companies and their products with the needs, wants, concerns, and interests of consumers” (Harris, 1993:13-14). Marketing Public relation, in simple description, is the marketing oriented public relations. The current business firms on the world utilizes the PR in various forms, some in the form of marketing dominated PR, other as a separate entities, still others as entities equally important for a company (Grunig& Grunig , 1998 cited in Geremew, 2017). The current study aimed at investigating the practices of Marketing Public Relations (MPR) in Ethiopian Airlines Group. Guided by interpretivist research paradigm, the researcher deployed qualitative approach to answer two basic research questions, “what is the belief of PR managers and practitioners about MPR?” and “What is the actual practice MPR in Ethiopian Airline Group?” Document Analysis, key Informant Interview and Focus Group Discussion were used to collect data for the qualitative study. Simple random sampling was used to select 7 participants of FGD and Purposive sampling technique to involve 3 managers for key informant interview; and relevant PR documents were randomly used to investigate the practices of MPR in the company. The finding from all tools revealed that marketing public relation is practiced in Ethiopian Airlines under the umbrella of Integrated marketing communications. The participants were found to believe the indispensable role of PR in marketing activities of the company. They believe that the changes occurred since IMC was introduced to the company and since they started working with all marketing communication actors, and they also mentioned that their reach of customers were very less when they were working in silo before IMC. There were also gaps revealed by the study like the place of PR in the organizational structure which affects the practices and absence of Public relation research in the department. Lack of periodical training to maximize the capacity of the practitioners in line with the rapid technological advancement and bitter competition in aviation business, lack of human power in PR&CC department, are some challenges mentioned. Therefore, continuous evaluation by IMC constituents, facilitating experience sharing, providing training to the practitioners and solving the shortage of man power were some of the recommendations made.