What role does Public Relations play in German communication agencies? - How do they understand and apply Public Relations concepts? -

Abstract

This research examines the role of Public Relations as a service field which is offered by communication agencies in Germany. The thesis studies which role PR plays for the service sector PR as an own industry and how the actors within that industry understand and apply PR concepts. In this regard this research tackles issues around a professional development of a young occupation, the market specifics and structures of PR communication services for communication agencies in Germany and how agencies act within this market. In this context the thesis is dealing with specific structures of agencies’ market and it is dealing as well with specific issues such as ethics, the actors’ challenges to prove their efficiency and the trends which are taking influence on the business in the future. This research relies on analyses of Anglophone as well as German literature and is based on a broad sample of high class experts – mainly PR practitioners – of more than forty semi-structured in-depth interviews. As an add-on there is a small sample group of PR approved field experts, containing scholars, former PR practitioners or clients, framing the core sample of primary data in order to contextualise literature and core sample feedback. This has been done to provide interesting viewpoints of outside the agencies’ perspective; like a client’s point of view. The thesis finds out that the service industry for PR in Germany is in regard to the emergence of specialised communication agencies a young one. As the research has been carried out in detail there is a wider range of reasons why the field itself struggles since end of World War II to establish a well prepared as well as defended own occupation. The research demonstrates that external agency factors like globalisation and technological evolution rapidly take influence on the service business likewise marked structural factors or the general challenge to differentiate services from competitors. The PR industry in Germany has still a positive future to face even if the market growth might not be comparable to the performance of the last twenty years which can be read in more detail within the research’s main part and the conclusion.