Almost all large corporations have gained some equines interest in a market outside of their own domestic market. However, the degree of global success varies dramatically among firms and industries. It is imperative for the managers and strategists to study each other’s international failures and successes in order to avoid duplicating the former and mimicking the latter. To exploit the opportunities of the world trade, companies will need to take an active and ongoing strategic approach to global marketing.
Global marketing and the opportunities it offers businesses today depend on the ability to adapt and find new solutions to complex issues. Among the major concerns Of strategic planning is the understanding and diagnosis of the environment, which can be described by aggregating many of the variables into sub environments. Quail¶y’ management is an important part of every company’s strategic planning process. Its sole purpose is to improve the performance of the organization. This would appear to be common sense, yet very few international companies realize the promise of quality management to consistently improve the organization’s results.
Strategic planning is used by organizations to counter the internal ND external problems they experience. The internal and external problems prevent the firm to reach its goals. This paper will use strategic planning to solve the issues at the Chronicle Gazette and will offer the management of the company a strategic vision of where the newspaper publishing industry stands today and where it is headed over the next decade. Furthermore, it will also present different strategies that the company can investigate in order to survive in the new business environment. . State of the newspaper industry 2. 1. Declining circulation and revenue The newspaper industry is facing problems because of the advancement in technologies. The newspaper industry is the most profitable of all media industries. In order to produce its product, the newspaper industry combines technology, information gathering and packaging services, and financial support from advertisers and readers to produce a perishable product that is usable by literate audiences and whose usefulness to most consumers diminishes within a day.
A variety of unique economic characteristics distinguish newspapers from other media. The mission Of newspaper enterprises includes both commercial and social facets. Like most other media, newspapers play important roles as facilitators of commerce, promoting consumption by creating consumer wants for products through advertising, and serving the financial interests of newspaper owners as part of the competitive economic system. Newspapers, however, play a greater role as facilitators of social and political expression than other media.
As a result, newspaper firms tend to emphasize conveyance of information and ideas about contemporary events and issues to a greater degree than other Edie that are more entertainment oriented. The future of the newspaper industry is unclear because of declining readership, illiteracy, and technological changes, but there is no reason to believe the functions of newspapers will no longer be required or that newspaper companies do not have the ability to adapt and survive. Newspaper companies are concerned because it appears that the decline In readership of newspapers among the population as a whole will continue.
Many persons, especially young people, appear uninterested in the current content of newspapers and make greater use of other media. Persons of all gees who cannot read, or do not read well, can be expected to increasingly use broadcast and cable services for their news, information, and advertising needs. Nevertheless, a great number of people can still be expected to want information of the type found in newspapers and there will continue to be a need for firms to gather and convey such information. Some futurists predict that the newspaper itself will disappear because of changes in production and distribution.
They argue that the printing aspects of the industry will disappear and the electronic product currently being produced by the news ND advertising portions of newspaper companies will be transposed into an electronic newspaper delivered via cable or computer. Traditionalists disagree, arguing that the portability of newspapers will halt or delay such electronic distribution. In the short term, the prospects for the newspaper industry remain good. Habitual use and steady demand for the information product, as well its continuing attractiveness to advertisers, indicate that it should remain a profitable industry well into the 21st century.
In the long term, the financial prospects of the newspaper industry are favorable even if genealogical and lifestyle changes lead consumers to accept electronic video- based distribution and the printing portion of the industry disappears. Under such a scenario, newspaper companies would replace their high-cost composition, printing, and distribution departments with a lower cost department that facilitates distribution or access through existing telecommunication or cable services, while continuing to use their prepares activities to provide the news and information for the new media product. . 2. Status of the newspaper leaders The New York Times and Wall Street journal are experiencing what other swapper businesses are facing. Both companies are still on a profitable state but the threat of new technology still affects their operations. The process of creating a product to distribute to market varies widely across the media industries. In the case of newspapers, for example, production is by necessity compressed into a few hours.
Most processes assembling newsworthy items from reporters and wire services, layout and typesetting the physical availability of the product for distribution must take place in a compressed time frame. In contrast, the time frame for a book may be months or years. Within particular segments of the industry, there have been some notable changes in the production process in recent years. For example, few book and magazine publishers now physically undertake their own printing, as major commercial printers such as R. R. Donnelley & Sons co. Do the majority of book and magazine printing on an ongoing basis.
Technological developments have facilitated efficient operations for firms that require geographically dispersed facilities locations. For example, the availability of satellite communications improves the efficiency of the reduction process for publications where there is a standard product that is printed in several locations. Prominent examples include The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. The newspaper industry in the United States is characterized by monopoly and its attendant market power, with 98% of newspapers existing as the only daily paper published within their markets.
In the few cities where local competition exists, it nearly always occurs between differentiated newspapers such as a broadsheet and a tabloid intended for different audiences or between papers that target substantially different geographic arrest than their competitors. The markets for most papers are the retail trading zones in which they exist. A national market is relevant for papers that circulate throughout the country and have the majority of their circulation outside the city of main publication.
The national newspaper market in the U. S. Includes papers such as the Wall Street Journal, LISA Today, and Christian Science Monitor. This national list is usually supplemented with the New York Times, which gains only about One quarter of its circulation in the national market but is included because of its standing as the national newspaper of cord. In debates within the range of elite opinion, moreover, the Times have not been Fearless even in the face of gross outrages against law, morality, and the general interest.
The newspaper industry is not significantly affected by globalization and remains primarily a domestic industry, both in the Ignited States and abroad. The primary reasons for the lack of globalization are that newspapers’ primary product is local and localized by nature and that linguistic limitations limit the exportability of newspapers. In terms of ownership, few American newspaper firms are globalization their operations for tragic reasons and lack of company structures and capabilities to support international activities. A notable exception has been DOD Jones & Co. Which has aggressively pursued globalization through the establishment of regional editions, such as Wall Street Journal Europe and Wall Street Journal Asia. The Gannett Co. Makes USA Today available in some parts of the world through satellite printing and distribution agreements and the New York Times Co. Owns the Paris-based International Herald-Tribune. 3. Why newspapers are facing declining circulations and revenues? 3. 1 . External Assessment 3. 1. 1. Economic Forces Currently Newspapers are still profiting but it has been declining due to new technology such as the internet and the recent economic crisis.
The internet has made sure that people don’t need to buy newspapers. The economic crisis prevents some individuals to purchase newspapers. Aside from buyers, newspaper businesses rely on advertisers as a source of income. Even the advertisers or the alternative means of income of the newspaper businesses are affected by the internet and innovative media. In recent decades, advertisers have increasingly come to view newspapers as means of reaching ass audiences, rather than as means of reaching segmented audiences that were once available when multiple papers existed.
Today, advertisers use other media particularly radio, magazines, and cablecasts to segment audiences and rely on newspapers, a print medium, for reaching mass audiences. In large local markets, some newspapers have begun to segment portions of their markets in geographic terms by providing cost-saving zoned editions that appeal most to local retail stores that serve customers only in a small portion of the entire newspaper’s market and to classified advertisers interested only in reaching nearby readers.
The general reliance on newspapers as a mass medium by national and large advertisers has created a systemic economic problem that makes it nearly impossible for competing papers to survive in the same market. When more than one paper exists in a market, the secondary paper is disadvantaged because a disproportionate amount of advertising is given to the leading paper, regardless Of how closely the second paper approximates its circulation. 3. 1 . 2. Social, cultural, demographic, and environmental forces Daily newspapers have problems.
Their readership, especially among younger traders and those most attractive to advertisers, is declining. Their mode of delivering what they produce requires huge capital expenditures in printing presses, newsprint, fleets of delivery trucks, and armies of individuals to drop the ink-on-crushed-trees product on readers’ doorsteps. Readers have long been used to getting their newspaper for very low cost, despite the fact that the expense of generating much of that content, especially local, original content, is going up.
Readers have had their newspaper subsidized by advertisers, who were traditionally willing to pay for access to readers’ attention. But advertisers are discovering other means of communicating with potential buyers, especially through the use of direct mail and other highly tailored, one-to-one forms of marketing. Hundreds of competitors in the online world have discovered that it is economically feasible and profitable to unbundled the commodity information that has historically been one of the staples of newspapers and deliver it electronically to targeted audiences.
The challenge to newspaper’s historic role as a mass medium with wide readership, deep advertiser support, status as an official publication racial to government, and a business model that was a license to print money has led many to examine how the newspaper of the future must change in order to survive. Newspapers are usually read by adults and some young people. The onset Of the internet reduced the young readers and it reduced the adult readers. People nowadays look for the internet as a primary source of information.
People nowadays think that the internet is the faster and more efficient means of gaining all information. 3. 1. 3. Political, governmental and legal forces Economics oriented critics of government intervention in the media realm happily rely on oversimplified economics. Under certain purportedly normal circumstances, the market provides firms with an incentive to produce and sell the product as long as the product’s cost is less than the purchaser will pay, that is, as long as marginal costs are less than marginal price.
The market thereby leads to a preference-maximizing production and distribution. The public may have reasons to presume the seller or producer exercises independent judgment and to believe that this supplier uses this independence to try to serve the purchaser’s interests. These concerns roved a ACTA last for the press to portray itself as independent and an explanation for most people’s outrage at any evidence that advertisers influence media’s editorial content. People value media products for various reasons.
Audiences want media products for entertainment or for specific information, as well as for edification. Attributes that make a media product good for one purpose may not be those that make it good for another. This diversity in functions introduces complications for the notion of the audience getting what it wants, complications that are often exacerbated due to the ultimate purchasers audiences and advertisers. Governments have not used means to give assistance to the newspaper industry. No laws have helped in reducing the problem of newspapers.
The government only tries to moderate the contents of newspaper but it does not interfere in the situation and condition of the newspaper industry. The government has no power to moderate or reduce the onset of the use of the internet as a competitor for newspaper businesses because of the basic freedom of expression. 3. 1. 4. Technological forces The internet changed the newspaper industry. The internet reduced the need or printing newspaper since there was already an online newspaper. Online newspapers are mostly free but some ask for payment before people can view the site.
Although offering content for free to users can boost an electronic newspaper’s market it may also take readers away from its print edition. Hence, the significant thing for online newspapers is to differentiate themselves from traditional media so that they appear to offer something different. In the long-distance information market, print editions may not be readily available. But there are other challenges. Once the news gets on the Web, it reaches a global market. The marginal cost for delivering news to more people is zero.
If an area can generate revenue that exceeds cost, it is worthwhile for electronic newspapers to explore wider markets that carry them beyond the geographical boundaries defining their print editions. How successful an online newspaper will be at attracting readers in the global marketplace is hard to predict. Experience has already shown that readerships for such publications can vary widely. Major newspapers such as The New York Times is The Wall Street Journal is attract significant numbers f visitors to their online editions from all around the world.
Smaller local newspapers may continue to attract only a regional readership, even when they go online. In the international arena, online newspapers may include business people needing first-hand information from another country or travelers seeking news of native lands. While residing overseas, these users may not have access to their regular hard copy newspaper and therefore turn to its electronic version instead. Turning to the local advertising market, electronic newspapers face competition from offline and other online media operators.
Printed newspapers often derive more than 3/4 of their revenue from advertising. Electronic newspapers have no strong model in this context because of advertisers’ concern over the endurance of the online readership and the online advertisement’s actual penetration. The current model requires electronic newspapers to deliver content free of charge to attract sufficient visitors to attract advertising. TO attract advertising, electronic newspapers must show an advantage over other media and over other online services.
In the long-distance advertising market, electronic newspapers must array advertisements that have global appeal. This means attracting big national and international advertisers to advertise their brands on the Internet. An alternative is to persuade local companies to think globally and to explore international expansion on the Internet. There remains the problem of how to effectively measure audiences for Web advertising. Different measurement systems exist and disagreements have emerged about the effects of Internet advertising. News organizations have different objectives for establishing Web sites.
Such sites can serve public relations function, operating as a brand-building tool. In this context, information is provided for free to users, because charging for exposure to a promotional feature is inappropriate. News Web sites may cover their costs through the advertising revenue they generate, as do print publications. Often, however, establishing this revenue stream takes time and an early entry into the online publishing market can enable a news publisher to learn important lessons essential to the maintenance of a viable Internet business in the longer term. . 1. 5 Competitive Forces New firms enter the newspaper industry if the current firms are earning their refits economic profits exist when returns in an industry’ that are superior than profits that are accessible from the substitute investments. Thus, the current firms leave the industry if the prices are high enough in order to handle their cost. Entry in the industry is complicated because the current firms are enjoying advantages Including the lower production costs that are not available to the new firms.
It is important to consider that the long-run average cost of production of copies of additional newspaper decreases as the number of copies printed increase, thus the economies of scale mean a lily subscription prices than a daily that only reaches some of the minority of the newspaper buyers. Another barrier in entry in the industry is the cost of starting newspaper. It shows that costs for the daily newspapers with the estimated start-up costs for television and radio station and particularly websites.
Furthermore, those new entrants in the industry will face higher operating cost due to extra costs such as promotion. Furthermore, the markets of the industry are facing some oblique competition between the different layers of newspapers including the national and suburban dailies ND weeklies. 3. 1. 6 External Factor Evaluation (EVE) Matrix FEE Matrix helps the strategists to summaries and assess the economic, social, cultural, demographic, environmental, political, governmental, legal, technological and competitive information.
The table on the following page shows the FEE Matrix Of The Chronicles Gazette. Key External Factors Weight Rating Weighted Score Opportunities Internet 2 0. 2 2. Advancement of Mobile gadgets: cellophanes, phones, smartness etc. 15% 0. 0225 Local news coverage 3. 5% 3 0. 15 4. Support from the government The retreats Economic downturn 5. 0. 3 6. Growing competition with the online advertisers 15% Lack of interest of the public to newspaper 0. 1 8. 9. People who are willing to pay for newspaper subscription is declining 5% 0. 0025 10.
Indirect competition from different layers of Newspaper 1 poor, 2 below average, 3 above average, 4 superior Total 100. 00% 1 . 3475 The total result of the FEE Matrix shows that the overall effort and performance of the newspaper company in handling the different opportunities and threats in the macro environment is poor. With this, it is important to focus on the different micro environmental factors or those internal aspects that are related with how to improve its current performance and achieve competitive advantage. 4. Internal assessment 4. . Organizational processes and structure The Chronicle Gazette has a well established organizational process and structure. The company has made sure that all the processes in making the newspaper and delivering it to clients were given much thought and consideration. The company made sure that all processes were based from high standards of quality. The company has made sure that its structure is well organized. The gazette’s structure is so organized and each member of he organization is trained to find a solution for each problem. 4. 2.
HER capabilities The Chronicle Gazette has a Human Resource group that hires the best journalist from the country. The HER group coordinates, communicates and discusses issues with the different journalist. The HER group also makes sure that it gathers competent workers that will print and deliver the newspapers. The HER group makes sure that the workers who will print and deliver the newspapers are given proper trainings on how to perform their duties. Lastly the HER group makes sure that they hire the best managers, sales and office personnel.