Introduction
“Public relations is a distinctive management function which helps establish and maintain mutual line of communication, understanding, acceptance and co-operation between an organization and its publics*.” (Harlow, 2003:7)
Cathay Pacific is an international airline registered and based in Hong Kong, offering scheduled cargo and passenger services to over 90 destinations around the world. It currently ranks as the world's third most profitable airline (net profit) and sixth largest airline by stock market value.
Their goal is to be the most admired airline in the world. The mission statements are as follow:
Ø Ensuring safety comes first
Ø Providing Service Straight From the Heart
Ø Encouraging product leadership
Ø Delivering superior financial returns
Ø Providing rewarding career opportunities
For Cathay Pacific, there are various types of stakeholders such as governments, suppliers, contractors, business partners, employees and passengers. In this survey, we identify passengers and employees as our target groups because they not only represent the more influential stakeholders but also provide a great impact on Cathay Pacific’s daily operations and the financial profit.
* Wilcox, D.L., Cameron, G.T., Ault, P.H. and Agee, W.K. (2003) Public Relations Strategies and Tactics, 7th edition, Allyn and Bacon
Purpose of the Survey
Ø To identify the specific outcomes of Cathay Pacific’s public relations activities.
Ø To focus on the linkage between the main stakeholders’ perceptions on an organization public relations, the behavior of stakeholders and the role of communication in this process.
Ø To use Hazelton’s taxonomies as a guide to explore the public relations strategies used by Cathay Pacific.
Ø To measure the effectiveness of Cathay Pacific’s public relations strategy and to learn from the weakness of the strategy.
Passenger Survey
Passenger Survey Research Questions:
The primary research applied for the survey design was used in a phenomenological way because interpretation prevails on logical explanation.
Methods and setting
The quantitative research method is predominant in the survey as it counts for 20 questions out of 23. The passengers’ profiles, their opinion about communication, community, services, safety and product leadership can be analysed in depth and it does not take a long time for completing the survey.
The basis of the survey is a quota sampling. The survey questionnaires are passed on to 15 participants who are frequent flyers of or used to be passengers of Cathay Pacific via email because of time constraint.
Survey Instrument
The use of Likert 1-5 scale questions helps to know passenger demographics and to quantify their attitude and opinions. The survey participants are asked to rate the importance of the statements and how well Cathay Pacific has demonstrated about the statements. The scale ranges from ‘Critical important’ to ‘Unimportant’ with a possibility of ‘Don’t know’.
At the end of the questionnaire, the use of open-ended questions allows people to express their thoughts on the subject freely and openly. Thus, it provides an understanding of the way people feel, which is difficult to establish from statistical analysis. Hence, passengers could give an explanation of their previous answers or could add information they find important.
Questionnaires and Dimension Relations
This passenger survey is exploring the relation between Cathay Pacific and their passengers. We are seeking the opinion of the passengers in selecting Cathay Pacific rather than other airlines and how they trust the airlines. Also, we take into the consideration the passengers’ opinion about the commitment of airline in providing service and safety.
Passenger Survey Result:
For Passenger Survey, the questionnaires are actually distributed via e-mail to 15 participants who are frequent flyers of or used to fly with Cathay Pacific.
Ø Only 12 completed the questionnaires and return to the survey team which is accounted for 80% of all the questionnaires distributed.
Ø All the respondents age 26 - 45. 83% of them travel with Cathay Pacific for personal purposes while the rest, for business purposes.
Ø 67% live in Australia and New Zealand, 25% live in Asia and 8% live in America.
This questionnaire is divided into four main areas: communication, community, service and, safety and product Leadership. The respondents are asked to rate the importance or each statement as well as how well it has been performed by Cathay Pacific.
Ø According to the result, service is one of the highly rated area where 100% of respondents agree that cabin crews and operation of the airline, namely, the punctuality of flight schedule is the most crucial.
Ø In terms of community, 58% of the respondents perceive the promotion of Hong Kong tourism is critical important to Cathay Pacific whereas half of them think that the airline’s charity activities are ‘Average Important’ (See appendix 1, table 1 – 4).
For the part of performance, the majority agrees Cathay Pacific performs ‘very well’ in the area of service, especially cabin crews.
Ø Safety is ranked the second, however, 100%of respondents trust the airline safety system. In competition, the price and quality of Cathay Pacific is perceived as ‘average’ by the majority of respondents and a quarter of them think its reward programs work ‘very well’ in encouraging them to fly with Cathay Pacific.
Ø The communication between Cathay Pacific and the customers is perceived as ‘very well’ by 83% of respondents (See appendix 1, table 5-8).
From the open ended questions, the respondents comment that they experienced uncomfortable economy seats and tedious check-in line of economy class. Moreover, they recommend an improvement in the meals for economy class and airline magazine. The airlines that the respondents perceive as the best airlines other than Cathay Pacific are Qantas airline, Singapore airline, Virgin Blue and Emirates airline. The main reasons that make them the best are price, destinations and service efficiency.
Discussion and Conclusion:
Due to the very small sample size, it is difficult to indicate the exact strategy that Cathay Pacific is using. However, from the survey finding, it is implied that the airline can employ a promise and reward management together with an informative strategy. Cathay Pacific has launched many reward programs for frequent flyers such as the Marco Polo Club and Asia Miles. In addition, they offer a collection of discount for all passengers such as Yum Sing booklet or the package tours (ticket and accommodation). This is reflected in the finding where 25% of the respondents think the airline performs ‘very well’ in the area of reward program and 50% think it performs ‘well’.
Cathay Pacific attempts to present the latest facts and figures about their operation and service. The official website provides the information such as annual reports and traffic figures in details. Their news releases meet public interest and are relevant to the current issues as fuel charge and 2005 profit decrease. This helps to create a sense of openness and trust among the public audience.
They also use the web page called ‘press room’ extensively in promoting their activity news, especially for their sponsorship of community’s events, for example, Hong Kong Sevens, International Races, International Chinese New Year parade, which may enhance their corporate reputation and present an positive image to all stakeholders. Their communication makes the public, especially, Hong Kong people, feel Cathay Pacific’s efforts in commitment, involvement and investment in the community. The survey suggests that 83% feel that Cathay Pacific’s communication is reliable and useful. 75% of respondents know Cathay Pacific is awarded the Airline of the Year 2006.
In terms of attributes of Cathay Pacific’s customers, it is hard for the survey to point it out because the number of the respondent is too small. However, the survey implies the passengers have high issue recognition as 100% think the safety issue and the delay problem are critical importance. They have moderate degree of information seeking as 33% think e-news is average important and 17% agree that it is above average important. The degree of involvement is reflected in the interest in the airline’s award and the concern of safety while 100% think they are critical important.
Employee Survey
Employee Survey Research Questions:
The primary research applied for the survey design was used in a phenomenological way because interpretation prevails on logical explanation.
Methods and setting
Ø Email – 20 emails were sent on 3rd April, however, only five of them were replied before the date of 9th April.
Ø Phone – Two calls were made. One is form Taiwan on 6th April and the other is from Hong Kong on 8th April.
Survey Instrument
There are two sections in the employee survey. The first part includes 35 quantitative questions to assess employee opinions and perceptions about Cathay Pacific’s internal communication, working environment, existing resource and job satisfaction, we use two Likert scales to measure in two dimensions, importance and performance; the second section has three open-ended questions as a qualitative part to provide an opportunity for employees to comment on any issue.
Questionnaires and Dimension Relations
The employee survey is designed for determining:
Ø What is employees’ viewpoint towards Cathay Pacific?
Ø How does one employee’s individual goal fit into the mission statement of Cathay Pacific?
Ø What kind of public relations strategies does Cathay Pacific use to communicate with its employees?
Employee Survey Result:
Based on the seven questionnaire replies, 90% are females who are ground staff and worked in customer service areas, 50% are worked 1~2 years in Cathay Pacific and 70% replies are from Asia.
Regarding the survey result from the perspective of employees’ work experience:
Ø 70 % of employees have the same opinion that Cathay Pacific did an excellent job by informing company goal and strategies to the staff.
Ø 70 % of employees also agree that they are well informed and encouraged through Cathay Pacific internal communication and team work cooperation.
Ø The entire employees who did the survey strongly agree that passengers’ safety is the priority concern.
Ø Around 70 – 80 % of employees rated Cathay Pacific’s salary/reward systems and the safety working environment in ‘average’ level (see appendix 2, table 9-11).
Regarding the survey results from the employees about how important they believe in each area:
Ø All employees think that passenger’s safety, inter-communication, salary and benefits, company reputation and job satisfaction are critical important to them.
Ø As well as around half of employees (43%-47%) who did the survey think that managers’ leadership and employees’ training programs are relatively average important to them.
Ø 90% employees think that a good balance of work and personal life is extremely important to them.
Ø Only 20% of employees consider that loyalty towards the company is not important and no one thinks that personal responsibility is unimportant.
In general:
Ø All employees agree and believe Cathay Pacific is acting upon the way to achieve the best product and service, and continually maintains its competitive position in the market.
Ø More than half of employees think that providing the best customer service is very important, but in the actual performance, they admit that they can only perform it in the ‘average’ level (see appendix 2, table 12-14)
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Employee Survey Discussion and Conclusion:
From the survey result, it shows that though well established and encouraged internal communication, employees can easily identify company’s goal and strategies, then properly fit into each individual’s personal goal in terms of the safely concern, the best services or products and the rewarding career opportunities.
Employees feel a sense of loyalty towards Cathay Pacific based on the different types of benefit providing by the company such as salary, training system and work environment. In addition, employees feel a sense of involvement by corporately making some company’s decisions. An effective leadership style from executive managers and high standard of personal satisfaction also lead to a sense of commitment for employees themselves. Furthermore, well communicated information about different issues give employees a feeling of trust within Cathay Pacific.
Overall, by having a good internal public relation strategy, employees now see Cathay Pacific as a high reputation company with a superior care for staff.
From the survey finding, we can see that Cathay Pacific uses at least 3 types of public relations strategies:
Ø Informative strategy: disseminating clear information to employees about the mission, benefit and requirement of the company.
Ø Corporative problem-solving strategy: Cathay Pacific encourages individual to talk about the ideas of solution whenever the issues occur. Moreover, the management leadership and communication styles promote the exchange of information.
Ø Promises and rewards strategy: increasing payment (salary/ benefits/ superannuation) and promoting employees based on their performance and achievement.
After conducting the survey, we find that we should improve the following areas:
Ø We should conduct a focus group before doing survey so that we can identify the important factors of the stakeholders which can lead to more effective questionnaire design. Moreover, focus group is the tool for environmental scanning that possibly leads the team to the new issues.
Ø We need bigger sample size because too small one can cause variance of survey result. Moreover, we need more time for conducting the survey so that we can add more questionnaires and do more in-depth analysis.
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