Much has been said recently about the supposedly all-pervasive nature of video game culture and its impact on young people. Some prognostications have it that today's children, on growing up, will not be interested in the printed word at all. This paper shows that, although children do play video games a lot, they also read extensively. It predicts that the printed word is far from dead, but that publishers will have to concentrate harder than ever on getting it right, both for today's children when they grow into adults and for the young people of the future.
As a result of the research program, the circulation department simultaneously altered the promotional appeals to stress news and information, and began an extensive sales and public place distribution effort following extensive internal testing. The results were an increase from 1985 to 1987 of: o Circulation up 13$; o Audience in MRI (recent reading) up 12$; o Simmons (through-the-book) up 15$; o Monroe Mendelsohn (frequency of reading, direct mail - HHI $60,000+) up 19$. In short, pre 1986 U.S.News in MRI for example, had an audience between 9.5 million and 10.5 million. Since redesign and today, U.S.News Simmons audience bounces around 12 million. At the time of the redesign U.S.News was in third place. It is now in first. Revenues went up a staggering 94.7$. Now that's a redesign.
In 1991 The New York Times Company Women's Magazines released the Family Circle Study of Print Advertising Effectiveness. This was the first fruit of a joint effort begun two years earlier with Citicorp's POS Information Services Division, which had developed a unique and sizeable scanner generated database recording purchase behavior by household, and Simmons Market Research Bureau. The study used Citicorp's database to measure differences in actual purchase behavior between two groups of demographically matched households. The first group was known to have purchased, either through subscription or single copy sales, the April 21 1990 issue of Family Circle. The second group, though demographically matched to the first, was not known to have purchased the magazine. The study demonstrated a clear and marked relationship between magazine advertising and increases in sales of the advertised product. While definitive exposure to the advertising in Family Circle was the single variable in the study, the extent to which the Family Circle audience duplicates that of other magazine audiences is known from syndicated audience measurement. Hence we were able to calculate approximate magazine GRP's delivered to the two groups during the test period. On average, the test group received three times-the magazine weight as the control group, allowing us to fashion a compelling case for the use of effective magazine weight levels to impact product sales. As an outgrowth of the Family Circle Print Effectiveness Study, which looked at the short term effects of advertising on sales, we wanted to use the Citicorp database to look at the longer term effects of advertising schedules on sales. It is this study, The Family Circle Study of Schedule Impact, upon which this paper reports. This is actually the third in a series of studies undertaken jointly with Citicorp POS and Simmons. The second study, which essentially replicated the first, was completed earlier this year. The results of this study clearly demonstrate that the substantial volume effects of magazine advertising can be sustained over a prolonged period of time with continued magazine advertising
At the suggestion of the BURDA publishing company in OfFenburg publisher of Mein schoner Garten, the gardening magazine with the largest circulation in Europe-the Allensbach Institute has for the first time tested the 'flow' concept developed by the Chicago psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi within the framework of a representative survey, with the aim of ascertaining the nature and extent of the sense of happiness experienced in the garden. Another important goal of the survey was to determine whether this instrument could provide more finely differentiated target group definitions and substantiate target group qualities. The findings of the multi-stage study show that gardeners who experience a great degree of happiness in the garden comprise a very important target group for gardening magazines. They use gardening magazines with above- average intensity and exhibit especially strong publication loyalty. They spend more than average for their gardens and consult gardening magazines more frequently before making significant purchases. Having a large share of gardeners who experience flow when gardening among the readership of a specific publication is thus an important marketing argument with respect to both readers and advertisiers. Above and beyond this, the study also offers important suggestions for articles and editorials. Based on the characteristics of persons who experience flow, as identified in the study, the gardening magazines can demonstrate how gardening leads to happiness, thus prompting more people to discover gardening as a source of joy.
The forces affecting brand marketing have resulted in many changes in recent years and will continue to do so at an accelerated rate over the next 5-10 years. One clear and damaging manifestation of these changes, not just from a publisher's viewpoint, has been a growth of sales promotion spending. This paper discusses the nature of these changes, with reference mainly to evidence from the UK. It considers how they are affecting media owners, and pays special attention to the opportunities which will arise for print advertising if the publishers adopt appropriate strategies.
Conventional socio-demographic criteria are increasingly losing effectiveness for predicting consumer preferences, explaining political behavior, and in particular, differentiating readership profiles or targeting media audiences. As a result, criteria such as lifestyle and psychographic concepts have been gaining popularity in media or market research. The challenge for magazine editors, is to translate these "soft" criteria into "editorial style" - in addition to editorial content - in order to appeal to the "right" audiences. The concomitant challenge for media researchers is to devise ways to measure "editorial style" in order to assess the effectiveness of such editorial efforts. For it is differences in "editorial style" which create distinct, unique publications likely to appeal to particular audiences that differ in more subtle ways than can be measured by conventional socio-demographic attributes. This is especially obvious in the case of women's magazines where, typically, several titles are aimed at specific sub-audiences that are indistinguishable by traditional socio-demographics, yet who do respond differentially to the way a magazine addresses its readers ("It's not what you say, but the way you say it"). Our study - a content analysis of stories highlighted on the cover and/ or preview pages of the four leading German women's magazines - was designed to measure a variety of characteristics of "editorial style" believed to be responsible for generating distinct product images, and thereby appealing to specific sub-audiences differing in more subtle ways than can be measured by socio-demographic attributes - or even by lifestyle preferences and psychographic profiles. The results of our analysis did indeed reveal distinctions based on such "qualitative" criteria as rhetorical, pragmatic, and linguistic dimensions of "editorial style", independent of thematic editorial content. We found that these criteria did in fact differentiate between otherwise similar journals in ways that were both meaningful in terms of deliberate editorial targeting and suggestive in terms of market positioning strategies of women's magazines. Thus our content analytic approach can be used to gauge audience targeting or image projection through editorial style.
Analysing research data for Tages-Anzeiger in 1990 made it evident that reading meant glancing at articles or reading headlines only. The aim was therefore to improve the intensity of reading by making the readers spend more time reading an issue of Tages- Anzeiger. It was supposed that enlarging the reading time would improve the reader- newspaper-relationship and generate renewals of subscriptions. In order to find out how a reader is attracted by an article and how he reads an article we decided to register the eye movements of the reader while he is reading an actual issue of Tages-Anzeiger and to conduct an interview afterwards with him in order to learn more about the selection process. This paper illustrates the relationship between the satisfaction of the reader by reading a newspaper and the efficiency in the process of reading this newspaper- based on the daily newspaper Tages-Anzeiger. It points out the items that enable the reader to select the relevant information in the most efficient way. In addition it is shown by what measures the newspaper was made more reader friendly and efficient to read.
The national media researches base on readers much more than buyers of the copies: the issue is that there is a lack of market research data able to support marketing decisions regarding circulation level development and control. Readership surveys are not satisfying for the editorial marketing as to the comparison between audience and circulation. Publishers have to know who are the buyers of the titles, how many they are, how they split between heavy, medium and light buyers and how many buy competitive titles. All these issues are figured out in a consumer panel carried out in Italy. The paper describes the research methodology pointing out the main results about news weeklies. The analysis aims to support basic marketing decisions providing the target definition of a title, the main competitors, its potential market (circulation). Moreover, the essay concludes with some applications of the results to the advertising market.
The quest for a cheap and reliable method for developing and launching successful new products is probably futile. Indeed this paper proposes that for a firm to develop profitably it is not strictly necessary to be able to predict how well its new publishing concepts will perform in the future, ie The Crystal Ball. What we need instead is to seek practical ways of limiting the scale of losses when a new product gets into difficulties, ie. Risk Management. In this way, a publisher can afford many more launches with a better chance that some will be successes big enough to outweigh the short-lived failures. The chief cause of runaway losses when a new magazine or newspaper finds itself falling short of sales targets is that senior managers a) have not planned for any other scenario but success in the prelaunch phase and b) have not installed or implemented systems for detecting problems early and taking rapid corrective action after the launch. The researchers have the unenviable task of attempting to contribute to management decisions at all stages before, during and after the launch. That they will allocate adequate budgets for quantitative as well as qualitative reader surveys, and for rapid, accurate retail audits before and after the launch. That they will aim for continuity and consistency in monitoring all aspects of each launch, including measures that may not be under the control of researchers eg advertising page yields, unsold copies, merchandising activity, etc. If such a policy is conscientiously pursued, techniques may be acquired over the years that have increasingly reliable predictive powers. We may, with persistence and luck, find that the organization has brought together a collection of skills, applied to an invaluable historical database, that deserves to be called - despite blemishes and occasional cloudiness - a Crystal Rail.
There is more to publishing a new consumer magazine title than just coming up with the "right" cover design; but it is clearly a very critical component. As a researcher it is of primary concern to first establish a real understanding of the key motivating factors that might draw loyal readership to a new magazine concept, and in doing so provide the framework for the total creative package. This paper describes the research undertaken by my company to explore this process; from the development through to the successful launch of Inside Sport, Australia's leading sporting magazine. The first part of the paper outlines the existing environmental factors within the Australian magazine market that are of particular relevance to this case study. Especially important to this study is the relationship between male magazine buying patterns and the nature of magazine distribution within this market. Some attention is also given to establishing the setting for the launch of the local product, Inside Sport, and the U.S. competitor, Sports Illustrated. The second part of the paper details the research undertaken to support the development of the local title via qualitative and quantitative techniques. Exploratory research in the form of focus groups, assisted in the formulation of the cover, content and positioning of the magazine. Within six months of the launch this was followed up by the quantitative component to confirm the demographic and altitudinal characteristics of the readership in order to fine tune the magazine format. Finally, the paper reviews the historical performance of Inside Sport, reflecting upon the contribution that research activity played in the eventual triumph of Inside Sport over the overseas competitor.
We have a better understanding of our competitive position and can match the effectiveness of our sales, marketing and communications methods with competitors. Analysing, interpreting and acting on the data from the research group database has helped us to be take the right decisions to increase sales through using market research to lead our thinking from the customers' point of view, rather than our expectations of what they might like and what they might want to buy.