Relationship building as a retention strategy: linking relationship attitudes and satisfaction evaluations to behavioral outcomes

The practice of public relations historically has focused on managing communications. Within the past 5 years, however, an increasing number of scholars have started to conceptualize the practice of public relations as relationship management, and have centred their research efforts on examining the factors that affect organization–public relationships. Recent research has shown that effectively managed organization–public relationships affect key public member attitudes, evaluations, and behaviors. In the current investigation, 122 participants were surveyed to determine whether student–university relationship attitudes and satisfaction evaluations distinguished those who returned to a university from those who did not. The results show that respondent relationship attitudes differentiate those who returned to the university from those who did not, which provides a quantitative illustration of the benefits of incorporating a relationally-based grounding for the practice of public relations. Implications of the findings, suggestions for managing organization–public relationships, and limitations to the investigation also are presented.