Conception and strategic management of publics in the energy companies in Spain

Abstract

The notion of publics as specifics and segmented groups has been a paradigm shift in public relations and corporate communication. This change in the way of understanding the receiver in the communication process allows communicate function to manage the relationship between the organization and those groups more effectively. For this reason, organizations should implement processes of identifying and prioritizing publics to communicate and be engaged with these groups in a strategic and effective way. The aim of this paper is to know what conception of “publics” prevails in the communication departments of natural gas and electricity companies in Spain, and on the other hand to assess the level of coherence /correlation between the identification and prioritization of strategic publics and the design of communicative actions to strategically manage the relationship between the organizations and these groups. The methodology of the quantitative study was aimed at Spanish energy companies and implemented through a questionnaire in an online platform. The results indicate that there is a dichotomy in the idea of publics in energy companies: on the one hand, they are conceived as specific groups, and on the other hand, they are considered as a massive collective. Nevertheless, it is observed that there is a methodological consistency between the importance assigned to the publics and the implementation of communication actions towards them.