Think of an entertain conglomerate along the lines of AOL-Time Warner or News Corporation, a giant infotainment machine that brings you music, merchandising, movies, themes, parks, multiplexes, news, radio basically the works. The aim of the media houses of India Is "To be in the frontiers of media. In the era of convergence to be in all related areas whether it requires backward or forward integration."
Category marketing activity (distribution channels, pricing across channels, how brands in general are marketed);
III. Sales Analysis
If readers per copy have to be considered then more analysis should be done apart from total readership. It is said that ultimate utility of any parameter lies in its relevance to decision making. Unfortunately readers per copy has always been one parameter that has been more over hyped than used for any decision making publication continues to base their pricing on their sheer ranking in terms of readership or circulation which-ever is more advantageous to them in the market. Advertising agencies and advertisers continue to base their press expense on analysis of both circulation and readership as independent parameter so let reader per copy be just another criterion used for validation rather than sole criteria. The average dailies found from different surveys comes out to be 7.1 no readers per copy. For same 2.9 is the average of top 5 English dailies. For example reach of Hindustan times amongst fridge owners is 18.6% now if we use print media in all “fridge-owner” house holds in Delhi typically when we make a plan we look at unduplicated reach among various publication till we arrive at a mix of publication that optimally reach the desired percentage of target groups. Among variety of readerships heavy readers percentage is highest in its class and is 42.2 %, for medium and light it is correspondingly 31.5% & 12%. The likelihood is that a person reads more than one newspapers would spend more time on medium then someone who just read one newspaper and it can be clearly observed that there is a huge difference between heavy users and light users of Hindustan times. This basically means that there is a lot of scope of increasing sales i.e. increasing the base among one time readers.
Brand Performance vis-à-vis other brands in the company
‘Hindustan times’ is the flagship brand of Hindustan Times group the other publications of the group are Kadambini.monthly literary magazine Nandan, children’s magazine; Hindustan, a north Indian Hindi daily.
Apart from publication Ht group is also in web portals, HT news site , and online matrimonial.
Table3.1
According to the “GROWTH SHARE MATRIX” of Boston Consulting Group we could place publications ‘Nandan’ and ‘Kadambini’ in DOGS category. They are struggling in low growth market with low share.
On the other hand web sites and portals can be placed in “STAR” category where market is growing but share is low. HINDUSTAN TIMES was initially highly profitable for company but currently it is placed in “QUESTION MARK” category.
Exhibit 3.1
SALES AND PROFIT TRENDS
On analyzing the installed capacity of the company we can find that its capacity is constant over a period of 1997-2002. But as it is expanding in West and South very soon its capacity is bound to jump. Its sales come from mainly advertising and the newspaper copies sales. Major chunk of it is through Advertisement sales whose revenues have been increasing at the rate of 9.6 % CAGR (currently 337.67 Crore) and constitutes --% of total revenues. The revenues from newspapers grew impressively at the rate of 16.4% CAGR. In terms of total no of copies sold there is an increment of 6.2% CAGR for both its newspapers and periodicals.
On comparing the data of last few years it is observed that inspite of increasing sales profit after tax of the company is declining steadly. One reason behind that is HT Group sales growth is not at par with overall market growth. And because of severe competition by TIMES OF INDIA GROUP, HT increases its marketing and distribution expenditure. As shown in table in last few years HT has increased its marketing expense by almost 16.4% CAGR.
Exhibit 3.2 Exhibit 3.3
PERFORMANCE BREAK DOWN (Segment Wise)
There are four segments in India region wise, Northern, north - eastern, western and southern.
In northern region Hindustan times is a major player. It prints out its editions from Delhi, Lucknow, Patna, and Kolkata. Hindustan Times is printed out of 12 centres including Bhopal, Chandigarh, Delhi, Jaipur, Nagpur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur, Patna, Ranchi and Raipur.
Exhibit 3.4 Exhibit 3.5
According to NRS 2002 survey HT is no. 1 in the northern region with sales figures of 11. Lakh copies daily in NCR. It is also no.1 one other north Indian cities viz Chandigarh and Lucknow. It is launching its daily edition from Mumbai and Chennai very soon to combat the competition posed by Times of India and The Hindu.
In East it is competing with ‘The Asian Age’ and ‘Telegraph’ and is currently third in terms of sales figures. At the all India level, with a sales figures of 21.34 lakh copies, it is at no. 3 position behind ‘TIMES OF INDIA’ and ‘THE HINDU’ with a sales figures of 61.13 and 28.02 lakhs.
DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS-
Distribution of all the news papers follows a common structure. The news paper is printed and from press it is sent to distribution agencies then to Local dealers and finally to the Hawkers. In the newspaper business the distribution channel is many times more important than even the customer’s preference. As the hawker’s are one of the influencer, the good margins to the entire one involved in distribution channel is must in this case. To fulfill Hindustan times has in past offered many schemes for hawkers and distribution agents.
IV. Competitor Analysis
Before we make a marketing plan, it is pertinent to find all the forces that hamper our market position and our revenues. Each such player is a competitor. Each competitor shows us our weaknesses and leads to opportunities of improvement.
Before we move forward lets have a look a glance at some basic questions:
Q: Who is a direct competitor?
A: One who can prevent our potential customers from buying our product.
Q: How do we tackle competition?
A: Satisfy customer’s needs (actual or induced), make him feel that he gets the best product, build brand and look for all opportunities for business growth.
To succeed as the number one newspaper brand in the country, we must look at all possible kinds of competition that we face. Kinds of competition we face:
-
Brand Competition - “Companies offering similar products and services to the same customers at similar prices”
Product: English news daily
Service: Providing latest news, information, knowledge and entertainment. – However different people seek different service in a newspaper.
Customers: Educated, English-readers, ‘infotainment’ seekers
Price: Invitation price ranging from Rs.50-100
Biggest Competitors: Times of India, The Hindu, The New Indian Express, Telegraph, Asian Age etc.
According to Exhibit 1CA, Times of India has emerged as the leading English daily with almost thrice the readership as HT. Moreover, the share of HT has dropped considerably. TOI has almost displaced HT as the leader in Delhi region which used to be HT’s strong hold.
Exhibit 4.1
INDIA’S TOP 5 ENGLISH DAILIES
Readership in ‘000
Table 4.1
Comparison between HT and the market leader i.e. TOI
- Industry Competition – “All those companies making same product or class of products.”
Class of products: Printed source of information and entertainment
- Competitors: Vernacular Newspapers, Magazines, etc
Exhibit 2CA
- Many don’t buy an English national daily because they get international/national news from TV and a local daily satiates their reading appetite with local news.
- Most vernacular newspapers provide local news at depth.
- Mandi rates, local advertisements and classified attract local businessmen to vernacular papers.
- Magazines are not a direct competitor as a magazine and a newspaper satisfy different needs
- Newspaper: Immediate delivery of detailed, factual description of news.
- Magazines: Detailed analysis and views on news items; cover stories
- Magazine does not replace newspaper
Magazine can supplement newspaper, a bouquet of magazine and newspaper can be offered→advantage of same distribution network
-
Form Competition - “All companies manufacturing products that supply the same service.”
Service: Provide Information and entertainment.
Competitors: Cable TV, web portals, Radio, etc
Exhibit 3CA
Television and internet attract much more number of users and are technologically superior ways to obtain information. However, it can not provide some of the uses that a newspaper has like it is portable, can be referenced anytime, provides reading pleasure and crosswords etc.
There are several potential customers who get their news from news channels as they do not get time for reading.
- Generic Competition - “All companies that compete for the same consumer money.”
-
Can be anything from a samosa to pencil, that can be bought in Re 1 –Rs3.00
Competitor’s likely future strategies
- Reaching the customer through every media possible viz. Newspapers, Radio, TV and Internet --- convergence is the new mantra
- Foreign strategic partners
- All newspaper groups taking the Internet very seriously. Paid news sites to contribute around 20% of revenues by 2005
- Collaboration with vernacular newspapers for distribution and joint selling of space
REFERENCES
- Readers comments on HT from www.mouthshut.com
- History and general information from hindustantimes.com
- Sales , PAT, marketing and advertising expenses from ‘PROWESS’
- All India sales figures of various dailies (Hindi & English) from ‘MARKETING WHITEBOOK’.
- Sales figures from National Readership Survey & Indian Readership Survey.
- Marketing Management – Phillip Kotler
