Breaking down the Stakeholder Environment: Explicating Approaches to the Segmentation of Publics for Public Relations Research

Abstract

This article reviews approaches to the segmentation of organizational stakeholders, recommending specifically that in the early (stakeholder) stage of strategic management, publics should be segmented using cross-situational approaches grounded in the notions of “consequences” and “resources.” In the later (public and issue) stages, publics should be segmented using situational approaches, derived from notions of “problem” and “issue.” The review and synthesis seeks to help scholars theorize more systematically about segmenting publics in public relations and to enable practitioners to more strategically segment and prioritize their organizational stakeholders.