SFN report: Product development for new revenue most important for improvement and growth through investment

Posted by Erina Lin on January 13, 2010 at 4:55 PM

The first annual World Newspaper Future & Change Study is a global research study about newspaper publishers' business strategies moving forward for the next five years, with the key objective to inspire newspaper executives to invest and innovate their business units and business practices, the latest SFN's report, Charting the Course for Newspapers, reported.

The purpose of the study is to pinpoint the business and strategic challenges of the world's newspapers, and then to identify the publishers' strategies moving forward to turn the challenges into opportunities.

The newspaper executive respondents recognise the profound need to build, improve and grow the company through investment. A clear front-runner in both the global survey and the Nordic surveys was product development for new revenue. On an 11-point scale, product development ranked at more than nine points. This signals a clear shift into a proactive, future-minded executive strategy in newspapers around the world.

Broken down by regions of the world, South America (9.8) and North America (9.7) ranked product development higher than other regions, while Western Europe (9.1), and Nordic Europe (9.0), ranked close behind. Eastern Europe (8.6), Africa (8.6) and Asia/Australasia (8.3) ranked product development lower on average compared with their Western counterparts, perhaps reflecting the lesser economic pressure and therefore diminished urgency felt by publishers in these regions.

Following new product development as strong investments for the future for newspaper companies were marketing and branding for newspapers; increased audience research and investment in customer relationship management. Marketing and branding were front-and-centre strategies, particularly for Asia/Australasia and African respondents, and to a far less degree for Nordic respondents.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world's respondents fell uniformly in the middle of the two extremes.

The branding and marketing range of responses suggest a divide between the growing Asian and African newspapers investment in budgets to enhance image, while the more economically pressed Western regions are investing in strategies that may directly bring them profits. Similar results were found in the image-enhancing investment strategy of customer relationship management, where all but Eastern Europe reported a robust future investment in CRM.

Nordic countries in particular rated audience research particularly high compared to other countries, while North American respondents rated audience research significantly lower.

The report, released by SFN and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, details the results of the Future & Change Study, completed in partnership with the Norwegian School of Management and the University of Central Lancashire in the United Kingdom, which shows a majority of the 653 respondents around the world are looking to businesses outside the printed newspaper in order to grow revenues and revamp structures along the value chain that are no longer functioning at full throttle.