PUBR 300 – Assignment 1
Universal Manufacturing Corporation is located in an Eastern Canadian city of 500,000 people. At 6,000 employees, it is one of the largest employers in the country, and the company has been at its present location for the past 50 years. Despite this record, management believes that the company does not have a strong identity and lacks visibility in the community.
The director of public relations has been asked to prepare a new public relations plan for the coming fiscal year. She recommends that the company first conduct research to determine exactly what its image is in the community. You need some hard data on which to base a community-relations campaign with the appropriate core messages directed to various segments of the community.
If you were the public relations director, what kind of secondary research would you do?
What qualitative and quantitative research would you recommend?
The following list of questions will help determine how much research is required before you can develop an effective strategy:
What is the problem?
What kind of information is needed?
How will the results of the research be used?
What specific public(s) should be researched?
Should the research be done in-house or should an outside consultant be hired?
How will the research data be analyzed, reported or applied?
How soon will the results be needed?
How much will the research cost?
