Segmentation of Publics

Public segmentation is a conceptual and operational effort to identify a public about a problem (vs. nonpublic) that brings individuals together to form a social entity. A public is a group of individuals who recognize a problem and are motivated to do something about it. The members of a public tend to become communicatively active about the problematic state to ideate and effectuate a solution for closure of the problematic situation. A public is distinct from nonpublic, mass, or general population in that its members show differential communicative behaviors about the problematic state such as being motivated to learn, think, and talk about it. They may differ on how the problematic state should be resolved (e.g., a public and a counter public about the same issue). They may or may not see each other face to face and may not be organized or be only loosely structured.

Public segmentation forms an essential part of a public relations practitioner's repertoire because identifying different segments of publics based on various factors provides the practitioner a guideline to design differentiated, more effective communication strategies for these distinct segments, rather than generating communication en masse for all parties involved in an issue.

Conceptually, public segmentation should be approached from theoretical explications of what a public is and how differentiated publics are in their behaviors. Situational theory, such as James E. Grunig's situational theory of publics and the more generalized situational theory of problem solving of Jeong-Nam Kim and Grunig, provide a theoretical base for segmentation through its predictor variables: problem recognition, constraint recognition, and involvement recognition.

From such theory, two sets of typologies of publics are used based on different problem-specific [Page 823]perceptual characteristics displayed by these publics. The first typology, within-a-problem/issue, is based on motivational differences among publics about the problem, and how actively or passively they communicate: active public, aware public, latent public, and nonpublic. The second typology, across-issues, is based on the breadth of the problem of interest and the extent of motivation: all-issue publics, those that are active on all issues in question; single-issue public, those that are active on only one or few of the issues; apathetic public, those who are completely inattentive; and hot-issue public, those that become active about an issue after it receives extensive media coverage.

Recently, situational theorists have proposed new dimensions based on the further segmentation of publics. Kim, Lan Ni and Bey-Ling Sha refined J. E. Grunig and Fred C. Repper's model of strategic management, which identifies three stages of the development of an issue; they proposed segmentation strategies for each of these stages. For the stakeholder stage, they recommend segmenting the stakeholders based on how they are situated in relation to the organization's consequences and resources. In the public stage, they use the situational variables to segment publics, and in the issue stage, they propose combining consequences and resources and the independent variables of the situational theory to segment publics. To summarize, Kim, Ni and Sha recommend using cross-situational variables to segment publics during the stakeholder stage and using situational variables during the public and issue stage.

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