What Can We Learn From Retailers' News Releases? A ‘Stakeholder Engagement’ Perspective

Abstract

This paper explores press releases, a neglected area of retail and marketing research, from leading British supermarket retailers over a two-year period to December 2002. Major themes for press releases are found to be products and services, corporate social responsibility, and corporate affairs and performance, although individual retailers show different emphases. A stakeholder engagement approach demonstrates how the releases seek to build networks of common interest, which is particularly demonstrable in relation to support for British farming and charitable activities. However it is noted that both these could be considered “easy targets”, grateful for any support they can obtain.

Keywords:

• Supermarkets
• public relations
• press releases
• stakeholders
• charity
• farming

Notes

To check consistency, a 10% sample of all stories was independently classified by a non-retail specialist, with few differences emerging (3 in 55, (save some where stories had been allocated to more than one category)).