THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PUBLIC RELATIONS PRACTICES IN THE OIL SECTOR A CASE STUDY OF AFRICAN PETROLEUM€™S PLC

Abstract

          African petroleum Plc, Enugu, a marketer of petroleum products and chemicals know that public support and good will as well as good corporate image are very important for business success. Tends to be influenced by their publics which includes, its staff, shareholders, customers and of course members of the press.

          The company is actually very much interested to know its public problem areas and opportunities with the aim to improving the organization’s overall performance do not know what their public thinks about African petroleum public Relations programmes and quality of services of the organization to its publics.

Be as it may, the researcher therefore decided to embark on the study;

          The objectives of the study are:

1.           To determine the extent of AP’S public Relations messages accessibility to their publics.

2.           To determine whether AP’S public relations practices influence the opinion of their publics.

3.           To find out if the largest audience of the African petroleum consider their public relations practices a adequate.

4.           To ascertain whether the AP’S public relations department is rated high in term of its efficiency.

5.           To know whether the right public relations media were being used.

This study is actually intend to cover African petroleum plc and their public in Enugu State. When asked the coverage in short, all aspects of the study as indicated in the study objectives were concerned.

Certain Survey was undertaken during which some members of the four major publics of African petroleum were interviewed and ideas that got from them really helped in pursuing certain areas of enquiring and to generate the hypothesis. The approach was purely empirical.

Relevant data based on the scope of the study were collected through desk research and field survey with structured questionnaire as the main instrument administered to two hundred and fifty (250) respondents comprising forty African petroleum staff, sixty share holders, one hundred and twenty customers and thirty members of the press.

The questionnaire was highly structured and open – ended where necessary. The questions and the response were very standard to facilitate comparison of responses and to secure good control of the questions.

Further, the questionnaires were also designed to secure information from the African petroleum’s public relations message and media, their public relations department, and programmes are quality of their overall services. Appropriate answers were checked and public relations practices and quality of AP’s overall services rated.

The results are as follows:

1.           The degrees of AP’s Relations accessibility to their public is satisfactory as majority of the respondents reported having easy access to African petroleum’s public Relations messages at regular bases.

2.           The Public Relations practice of African petroleum influences the opinion of their public. Reason being that most of the respondents said that AP’s Public Relations messages are persuasive and convincing thereby influence their opinion as regards the AP’s programmes and procedures.

3.           The right Public Relations media were often used as greater proportion of the respondents supported this claim and indicated that AP uses media combination which are familiar to target audience to achieve the desired effect.

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PUBLIC RELATIONS PRACTICES IN THE OIL SECTOR A CASE STUDY OF AFRICAN PETROLEUM’S PLC