Abstract:
The importance of image cannot be overemphasized. According to Marconi
(1996), “a good image, nurtured protected and brought to full bloom can create a halo
that will light up the personality, the product, the company and the stock market". Given
this, it is only important that organizations have control over their corporate image. To be
able to do this, a company needs a communication tool which will aptly convey this
image. Public relations, as defined by Fill (1995) is "a series of programs that aim to
develop and enhance some of the identity cues used by the stakeholders to develop their
respective images of the organization and its products." The main problem for this study
is "What is the perceived effectiveness of public relations tools as used by SUN Cellular
to convey their corporate image?". Under this main question are four sub questions which
are: 1) What are the existing public relations tools used by the company?; 2) What is the
corporate identity of the company?; 3) What is the corporate image of the company? 4)
How similar are the corporate image and corporate identity of the company using the
coorientation model?
The study used two qualitative tools for data-gathering: key informant interview
and focus group discussions. The interview was used to identify the public relations tools
used by the company and also to ascertain what the identity of the company is. The focus
group discussions were held to determine the corporate image of the company based on
one of their target publics which are the students of the University of the Philippines,
Manila.
It was concluded that the company uses mostly advertising materials as their
public relations tools. SUN Cellular had a good identity while the public had some
negative perceptions about SUN in terms of some of the categories used to measure the
corporate image. Upon comparison of the corporate identity and corporate image using
the coorientation model, it was found out that there was a significant difference in the
corporate identity and corporate image of the company. This may have been affected by
the fact that they use advertising materials as their PR tools. The people also had a bad
image of SUN especially because of the lack of signal and bad services. Too much
service also tends to be confusing for the consumers and it reflects negatively on SUN.
Lastly, it can be said that the image coming from the public are not only affected by the
advertisements but are the results of other media as well.
