1 development trend of public relations market in China
1. 1 The market has a huge demand for public relations services.
As some experts have described, the competition in China market has gone through a process from product development, commodity promotion to image building. Today, the competition in China market is an era of image competition, and enterprises pay more attention to marketing communication. According to the latest data released by AC Nielsen International Media Research Headquarters, the advertising market in China reached 80 billion RMB in 2000 (see: Guangzhou Daily 20065438+0 March 27th). People are exposed to a large amount of advertising information through mass media, family mailboxes and streets. In this era of advertising information explosion, the power of advertising is obviously declining. More humanized public relations will have more and more influence. According to a survey conducted by China International Public Relations Association on the turnover of 30 professional public relations companies in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the turnover of 1999 is 654.38 billion yuan. In 2000, the turnover reached 65.438+0.5 billion yuan, with a growth rate of 50%. Nationwide, I'm afraid it far exceeds this figure. In the vast China market, the market potential of public relations is enormous.
On the other hand, starting from 1999, China has introduced the post qualification training examination and the system of holding certificates for public relations practitioners. 1999 12, the first national examination, more than 7000 people registered for reference, most of them were candidates from Beijing, Shandong and Guangdong. This also shows that public relations is an industry full of development potential. Americans agree that public relations is one of the five fastest growing occupations in the United States. This trend also exists in China.
1.2 With China's accession to the WTO, the public relations market will enter an international development period.
China's entry into WTO indicates that the world's largest market has entered the track of internationalization, and the China market has directly become an integral part of the international market. It will no longer be difficult to divide domestic market competition and foreign market competition by region. Foreign enterprises want to enter the China market, while domestic enterprises want to enter the international market. The evolution of China market provides a good impetus and fertile soil for the international development of public relations in China. The driving force for development comes from the requirements of the market first. Even local public-private joint ventures must meet the needs of market development and improve their international service standards. Secondly, from the research results of international public relations and the introduction of public relations theory. Leaders of the International Public Relations Association and authoritative scholars of international public relations have come to China to give lectures. Many public relations works by foreign scholars have been introduced to China, enriching the theoretical literacy of public relations practitioners in China and promoting the integration of China's public relations theory with the international community. There are also business ideas and technologies brought by foreign public relations consulting groups, which have obvious promotion effects on local public relations.
1.3 China's western development will certainly promote the expansion of the public relations market in the western region.
The development of the western region is a grand plan, which will greatly promote the economic development of the western region. Just as the reform and opening-up of coastal cities brought public relations to China, the public relations market will be widely expanded in the western region and become a new growth point for the development of public relations in China. It can be predicted that the development of public relations in western China is based on the development of coastal cities and closely follows the pace of international public relations.
1.4 China's public-private relations have entered the stage of specialization and technical development.
For some time, China's public-private relations market, which is in its initial stage, was once mixed, and the capabilities of public-private relations companies were uneven; Advertising companies undertake public relations business; Some temporary groups also rely on interpersonal relationships to undertake public relations business; As a result, the overall service level of the public relations market is not high. With China's imminent accession to the WTO and the internationalization of China's market, the requirements of the market have greatly improved the specialization and technicalization of public-private relations in recent years.
(1) Public relations education has entered a normal stage. After Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou opened the undergraduate major of public relations, Beijing and Shanghai are also opening one after another. There are countless specialties. In many other majors of higher education, such as economics, management and journalism and communication, almost all courses in public relations are offered. Many internationally renowned public relations scholars and experts, such as Jeff Jenkins in Britain, scott carter Lip and James Grugni in the United States, have been translated and published one after another, laying a good foundation for the popularization of public relations theory.
(2) The professional team of public relations has gradually grown and matured. One of the professional teams is a local public relations company. Second, the international public relations consulting group is in China. According to the survey conducted by China International Public Relations Association at the beginning of 200 1, there are about 100 local and international public relations companies in China with more than 5,000 employees. Thirdly, there are a large number of public relations practitioners in enterprises and government agencies in China. Although there are no complete statistics showing their number, it is a huge team. China's public relations team is building an "army" of professionals to provide professional services for enterprises and social organizations.
③ The practical level of public relations has been continuously improved. China International Public Relations Association conducts the selection of the best public relations cases in China every two years. Judging from the cases selected in recent years, there are more and more cases of international public relations consulting groups in China, and the case level of local public relations companies is also obviously improving year by year. The case involves new public relations issues such as corporate image overall strategy, integrated marketing communication, corporate culture and crisis management, which reflects the improvement of professional and technical level of public relations from one side.
With the internationalization of China market, China's public relations must meet the needs of international operation and improve the level of specialization and technicalization, which is the inevitable trend of the development of public relations services in China. Under such a trend, the services of professional public-private joint venture companies show a trend of professional division of labor, for example, some are good at services in a certain industry, such as medicine and IT. Others are good at professional services, such as marketing and public relations, media relations and large-scale activities.
2 the characteristics of China public relations market
2. 1 the influence of China's national culture on the communication of public relations.
The Chinese nation is a nation with profound cultural heritage, and traditional culture is deeply rooted in people's hearts. After the internationalization of the market, the conflict and integration of foreign culture and local culture is a remarkable feature of this period. After China's reform and opening up, there are many cases in this field. For example, in the advertising language of Nestle Coffee, the original demand of "instant convenience" is hard to arouse consumers' desire in China. Changing it to "delicious" will make consumers sit up and take notice. The conflict between pyramid selling and traditional culture is also obvious. The concept of pyramid selling encourages salesmen to sell to 200 people around them, while traditional culture advocates "pro-not buying, pro-not selling". Coupled with problems such as tax and profit rate, pyramid schemes are full of twists and turns in Chinese mainland. From the perspective of consumer psychology, conformity consumption and conformity psychology are common consumer behavior psychology. Therefore, the role of opinion leaders is very important, such as the opinions of doctors in the dissemination of pharmaceutical products and the opinions of stars and artists in the trendy consumption. In the knowledge and understanding of public relations, it is even more obvious. Many people regard public relations as a "key problem" in interpersonal relationships, or as a "universal salvation prescription", or as etiquette; What's more, the relationship between the public and the public is regarded as an "erotic gesture" and called "Miss PR" and "Mr PR". In public relations communication, Taiwan Province scholars have made a profound analysis of the characteristics of the Chinese nation: "Human feelings, face and relationship" often become the first problem to be solved in public relations communication. Therefore, the effective communication of public relations in China needs to go through a profound traditional cultural level.
2.2 The development of the public * * * relationship market is unbalanced
The development history of modern public relations in China is only over twenty years. The formation of the public-private relationship market is also short-lived. Therefore, the development of China's public relations market is unbalanced. The main manifestations are as follows: First, the relationship between the government and the public has developed rapidly in coastal cities and central cities, but slowly in the west or other non-central cities. Second, the professional ability of public relations practitioners is uneven. Relatively speaking, large public relations companies and long-term public relations companies have stronger professional ability, and vice versa; Public relations companies in central cities are capable, and vice versa. Third, public relations services are mostly at the technical level and less at the decision-making level. This is probably one of the main gaps between China's public relations and international public relations. The unbalanced development of public relations market is an objective reflection of the present situation of China's market economy development in the public relations market, and this imbalance will be gradually improved with the development of market economy.
2.3 The guiding role of the media is very important.
Paying attention to public opinion orientation is a very obvious tendency of the local public, and often a report will cause an uproar. A CCTV Spring Festival Gala will become a topic of endless debate for hundreds of millions of viewers almost every year. Advertising is often in direct proportion to sales. Even for enterprises with good market share, once advertising is reduced, sales will soon have problems. The media occupies such an important position in communication and is the main carrier of public relations communication. Therefore, the media relationship has become an extremely important issue in the relationship between the public and the media, and the relationship between enterprises and the media has become "demand" greater than "supply". With the stratification of consumption and market segmentation, mass media has also begun to regionalize and differentiate. For example, in addition to the national edition, People's Daily also publishes South China and East China editions. The investigation reports provided by various media to the market clearly show their demands and readers. Therefore, in the choice of media, it is necessary to deal with the relationship between the public and the public in a targeted manner.
In the long-term practice and research, the author found that the special public relations activities effectively helped the planning subject to spread information to its target public and played a good media role. As long as a special event is well planned, innovative and carefully implemented, it can often produce infectious communication effects. Therefore, special events are regarded as common media of public relations.
2.4 The public * * * relationship market needs to be cultivated.
China's public relations market has great potential, but the market is not mature, as shown below:
(1) The social foundation of public relations is still weak. Although China's public-to-public relations experienced a great exchange stage from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, and nearly 400 books on public-to-public relations have been published successively, the public's understanding of public-to-public relations is still superficial. There are still more people in the public who don't understand the relationship between the public and the public. An undergraduate majoring in public relations once said that he was afraid to show his parents his diploma when he graduated, because his parents didn't know what public relations was and had an ambiguous understanding. An American scholar surveyed many people related to public relations in China and found that there are still many people who don't know the definition of public relations.
② The target public of professional public relations service lacks the essential understanding of public relations. The public * * * relationship is the information dissemination management between the organization and its public, so the target public of the public * * * relationship should be the managers of the organization or enterprise. In fact, many managers' understanding of public-private relations is vague and incomplete. The most obvious signs: First, many enterprises have no public relations department, most enterprises have no public relations budget, and public relations expenses are often spent on advertising fees. Second, the target public who applies public relations does not have a deep understanding of public relations. Public relations service is a kind of consulting service, and the opinions of consultants need to be recognized by the public relations subject before they can become practice. Therefore, the public relations consciousness of the public relations subject is particularly important. The author once experienced such a case: a world-famous Chinese designer was invited to design creative public relations advertisements for an organization, but it was not adopted and was replaced by a very mediocre and unclear advertisement. It can be said that customers lack public relations knowledge, which affects the professional level of public relations.
(3) The market operation order of public relations needs to be standardized. At present, there are two main problems: first, the employees are mixed, and public relations services need to be standardized. It is believed that this situation will be greatly improved with the introduction of professional requirements, vocational training and assessment system for public relations practitioners. Second, the rules of the game in the public-private relationship market need to be standardized. Some public * * * relationship projects are not standardized, and some institutions and groups cheat public * * * relationship companies in the name of bidding; In order to keep their jobs, the employees of some institutions and groups do not hesitate to sacrifice the reputation of their institutions and groups to cheat the opinions of professional consultants as their plans and schemes to claim credit from their superiors. This phenomenon is not uncommon, and even many of them happen to large institutions and groups.
To solve the above problems, we need to strengthen the communication of public relations itself-not only the concept of public relations, but also the essence of public relations. At the same time, we should move "God" with the excellent work of public relations practitioners. We should also give full play to the management role of trade associations with public relations, which not only represents the interests of the industry, but also provides effective management measures for the standardization of industry management. Only in this way can we ensure a good social development environment for public relations.