Integrisanje odnosa s javnošću u sistem marketing komuniciranja

Public relations can be seen as a management function, whose task is to establish and foster relationships of mutual understanding and goodwill between the organization and various groups of publics who can impact on its success or failure, but also as one of the most important marketing communications tools. Since public relations could potentially have great power and influence on the formation of public opinion, on the creation of the image and reputation of the organization, as well as on the establishment and maintenance of high quality and long-term relationships with various business and market structures, for the needs of the doctoral dissertation a research was carried out in the higher education institutions in Serbia, in order to determine the degree of development and forms of application of public relations in the context of the overall promotional activities of these institutions. The main objectives of this paper are related to: a comprehensive theoretical consideration of marketing communications tools; a theoretical consideration of public relations as a management function, and then determining the place, role and importance of public relations in the marketing communications system; a review of the application of the most important areas of public relations, as well as the importance and role of the public relations as the marketing communications instrument in the higher education institutions in Serbia. Based on the defined objectives and goals, hypotheses were formulated. In order to test the hypotheses, the domestic and foreign literature and Internet sources were used, as well as the results obtained through primary and secondary empirical research. For the purposes of primary research, the structured questionnaire was designed. Elemental analysis of statistical data obtained through primary research, was conducted by calculating frequencies, percentages and cumulative percentages for all dependent variables. The paper is structured in three parts: the first part is entitled "Marketing Communications Development"; the second part, titled "Place and Role of Public Relations in the Marketing Communications System", deals with the most important characteristics and areas of public relations, and then on the mutual relations between marketing and public relations. The third part is called "Empirical Research". First, the position of the public relations profession in Serbia is presented, based on the researches conducted by the Serbian Association of Public Relations (DSOJ) in 2008 and 2012; afterwards, the results of the research conducted in March 2015 in the higher education institutions in Serbia for the purposes of this dissertation are presented. In the final part of the dissertation the hypotheses were tested and the final assessment of the results obtained are presented