|
|
This is a limited free preview of this book. Please buy full access.
Since such magic bullets do not exist in Web page design any more than they do in public relations or health communication, that quest is certain to be a long one.
The result of using these old approaches has been that research on homepages largely has been unable to address the most central question in all modern marketing and public relations research and practice: How can organizations build and maintainrelationships with their publics/customers? This relational focus has characterized marketing research and practice since at least the early 1980s and public relations since the late 1980s, yet Web page design and use has, on the whole, failed to adopt it. Vorvoreanu’s Web Site Public Relations steps in to fill this void and help move Web site research and use toward a more professional and theoretic foundation.
This book is an original and rigorous attempt to build a model of the experience of visiting Web sites that places the visitor—rather than the sponsor or Web page—at the center of the experience. Although it is one of the first such attempts, this book’s rigor, theoretic foundation, and genuine insightfulness suggest that it will stand the test of time and may well become one of the most influential works in visitor-centered research on Web sites and the Internet. As such, the findings reported here will be of interest to those who use the Internet, whether for personal or commercial purposes, as well as those seeking to study the social and behavioral effects of the Internet, including those seeking to study its effects on children and adolescents.
Web Site Public Relations focuses attention on the cognitions, attitudes, and behaviors visitors exhibit while visiting Web sites. The conceptual framework that results, as well as the research protocol Vorvoreanu develops and explains, illustrates, and explains the structure and anatomy of visitors’ experiences on Web sites along two major dimensions: time and space.