A comparison of perceptions of public relations, marketing, and advertising educators toward integrated marketing communications

This thesis sought to answer the research question: How do the top educators in the area of public relations, marketing, and advertising perceive the concept of integrated marketing communications as compared to one another?The mail survey applying Q methodology was sent to 15 top educators in each of the three fields in the United States for a total sample of 45 educators. A total of twenty-five responses were returned representing 55.5 percent of the sample. When the respondents were analyzed by discipline, there were eight responses from the pubic relations educators, nine from the marketing educators, and eight from the advertising educators. As a result the responses from each disciplines comprised, respectively, 53.3 percent, 60 percent, and 53.33 percent of the total sample.The statements in Q-Sorting were collected from the review of literature and in interviews with the Ball State University advertising, and public relations professors. Each statement either agreed or disagreed with the perception of integrated marketing communications. Each educator was asked to indicate how strongly they agreed or disagreed with each statement.A computer program developed for Q-Methodology studies was used to extract the factors from the educators' responses. After the Q-Sorts were tabulated, the researcher identified two factors, Factor I, and Factor II. The majority of Factor I respondents were the marketing, and advertising educators. The majority of Factor II respondents were public relations educators.The researcher concluded that these two groups had clearly different attitudes toward IMC. Stated in another way, marketing educators and advertising educators had similar perceptions of IMC, while public relations educators perceived the IMC concept very differently. Public relations educators indicated that the concept of IMC would be acceptable if it should be viewed as a total organizational communications function.Department of JournalismThesis (M.A.