Case scenario:
Kudler Fine Foods is a local upscale specialty food store located in the San Diego metropolitan area. The company has three locations (La Jolla, Del Mar and Encinitas). Each store has approximately 16,000 s.f. of retail space located in a fashionable shopping center. The stores are stocked with the very best domestic and imported foodstuffs and divided into the following departments. Kudler Fine Foods has experienced significant growth and is now focused on expanding the services, improving the efficiency of its operations and increasing the consumer purchase cycle as a means to increasing the loyalty and profitability of its consumers. Within the next 12 months, Kudler plans to increase customer loyalty by offering added high-margin services, leveraging the firm's better understanding of customer purchase patterns, and providing more efficient operations. Profitability will also be increased by cost reductions accomplished through supplier partnering programs. New customers will be acquired through social network marketing and word of mouth. Public relations campaigns are a frequent output of public relations planning. Because campaigns are usually designed to accomplish unique objectives, they must be planned using non-routine procedures (Lattimore, 2004). The PR campaign will affect the marketing function of Kudler Fine Foods by generating more consumer prospects for the company. Kudler will need more publicity to reach the goal of increasing profitability. Publicity is one aspect of public relations. Both involve the same goal of drawing attention to the aforementioned company. Marketing or publicity consists of media interests and actual coverage, such as a news story, radio interview. This in turn promotes customer awareness. Getting the public to discuss Kudler Fine Foods is the ultimate goal of PR. When consumers grow aware of what Kudler is selling and what the company stands for, consumers will be able to relate to the company on many levels. Publicity can come and go, but with a solid PR campaign Kudler Fine Foods will be able to connect with the targeted consumer based audience over the long haul. If a public relations campaign is correctly researched and planned, its elements will interact to produce an effect that is much greater than the sum of the response to the individual messages. If the marketing mix is not right, the elements of the PR campaign combined, no matter how individually excellent, may fall short of the goal or objective. Therefore, it is important to measure the cumulative impact of public relations campaign, keeping in mind the goals developed in the planning phase. This can be done only after the campaign has been in progress long enough to achieve some results. Effects are generally attitudinal, although they can also be behavioral if one campaign goal is to maintain or increase favorable attitudes toward an organization among members of certain publics.