MEASURING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ORGANIZATIONAL PUBLIC RELATIONS: AN EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH ON CRISIS RESPONSE STRATEGIES

<p>In this study, the effects of organization-public relations and crisis communication strategies on audience perception and attitudes during a crisis have been investigated experimentally. In the context of the research, a university in Turkey was selected as the organization and students were selected as stakeholders and Coombs' situational crisis communication theories have been tested on 97 students in an experimental manner. Students were divided into 8 groups according to different corporate reputation and relational satisfaction perceptions; a crisis situation was created and a different crisis communication strategy was applied to each group. According to the research results, no matter what the thoughts were before the crisis, crisis communication strategy doesn’t reduce the responsibility of the organization in crisis and it doesn’t affect the minds of the audience, but the perception of corporate reputation and sense of relational satisfaction affect the credibility and confidence of the organization's words and actions. Regardless of the corporate reputation and relational satisfaction, the strategy of denying the crisis gave the highest accusation score and the messages given to reduce the negative consequences of the crisis were found effective within each participant group. The reason for this is that participants weren’t concerned about the cause of the crisis; they were concerned only with the messages to reduce the harmful effects of the crisis. According to the research results, organizations should make an effort to minimize the negative effects of the crisis and attach importance to their corporate reputation and relational satisfaction in order to increase the credibility of these efforts.