Contents

Introduction........................................................................................................2
Main Components of Marketing Management..................................................2
Situational/Strategic Analysis........................................................................3
Strategy Planning...........................................................................................4
Strategy Implementation and Control............................................................4
Marketing Management and other Aspects of Business Management..............5
Key Challenge Affecting Marketing Strategy of the Newspaper Industry........6
Strategic Analysis of the Newspaper Industry.................................................10
SWOT Analysis............................................................................................10
Conclusion........................................................................................................11
References........................................................................................................13

Introduction
The industrial world has come a long was from the early days of industrial
revolution. As the industrial world has grown tremendously, it has become
more complicated and a subject of academic study. Business concepts have
evolved and new findings and ideas have been recorded continuously.
Different organizations have different business strategies and plans. Marketing
management has become an essential part of a business strategy. Marketing
management is the proper use of marketing techniques, resources and
activities by a company or organization to promote its products (Kotler et al,
2006).
This report aims at explaining the main components of strategic marketing
management. For better understanding the report then concentrates on the
newspaper industry in particular. It explains how internet has become a key
challenge for the newspaper industry. Also the author demonstrates the ability
to apply marketing theory by doing a SWOT analysis of the newspaper
industry.

Main Components of Marketing Management

Marketing is one of the main aspects of business management. It is also one of

the most powerful in that it has the potential to significantly impact the entire
business management process that few of the other aspects of business
management can match. Marketing and its management is almost as diverse a
field as business management itself. The main components of marketing

consist of analysis, planning, implementation and control (Czinkota &

Ronkainen, 2007). These are the components no matter what the kind of
industry or service the target of marketing might be.

Situational/Strategic Analysis

Strategic analysis is mainly about analyzing the strengths of organization and

the external factors that can influence the business position. It is necessary to
understand the current environment before defining specific marketing
activities (Lamb et al, 2008). It involves in assessing what a particular
organizations position is with respect to its customers, how the business is
functioning within and its competition outside. Various qualitative and
quantitative methods of data collection are used for marketing research to be
carried out. Sources of data will consist of primary and secondary, with the
secondary ones being those that are already available i.e. reports, journals,
articles, etc and the primary sources being surveys, questionnaires to the target
audience, etc that will reveal product specific or service specific information at
the desired time period. Analysis is also required of the external conditions to
take account of the changes in technology, changes in governmental policies
that could impact the industry, etc. Customer analysis is equally important
which includes customer buying trends, continual assessment of the target
customers to increase the base of potential customers. Various tools that can be
used to carry out the analysis are: PEST analysis, scenario planning, SWOT
analysis, market segmentation, etc.

Strategy Planning

The situation following in depth analysis and data gathering leads to one that
requires intense planning and simulation. Due to knowledge of the
opportunities and risks gathered from the analysis stage the company must
now plan its actions based on its objectives that will involve long term
strategic decisions, tactical decisions that affect mid term goals and
operational decisions that affect daily operations of a company (Czinkota &
Ronkainen, 2007). By rigorous cost and profit estimates on various models of
action, the company will be best able to judge which model to choose. The
model chosen might require that necessary changes be made in the existing
organizational structure or a complete revamp in some cases to help achieve
the goals and objectives set. It is also imperative that at this point in time, the
company comes out with alternative plans in order to meet its goals and
objectives in case the primary plan does not work out.

Strategy Implementation and Control

These are probably the most important phases in the marketing plan since no
matter how much effort is put into the analysis and planning phases, the
implementation needs to be carried out according to plan with appropriate
control. The implementation should be carefully carried out since often times
it is found that plans are hardly adhered to. The implementation and control

must also allow for adequate flexibility for tackling with unexpected and
undesired situations. Strategy implementation directly affects everybody
associated in an organization (David, 2006). By frequent monitoring and
control of the implemented plans, the company can gauge the effectiveness of
a particular plan or change it accordingly based on the effects it is having.

Marketing Management and other Aspects of Business Management

As mentioned above marketing is an important part of the overall business

management and plays an important role in the organizations success. An
organizations success depends on how it can satisfy its customers through its
products and services. This is where marketing plays an important role. It is
the marketing plan of an organization that decides how an organization goes
by in making its products and services available to its customers. Also
marketing plan is what decides in which market the organization is going to
compete and what are the steps to be taken to meet and satisfy the customers
needs. Hence, the success of all other aspects of business management is
directly or indirectly dependent on the success of the marketing strategy. For
example staffing and production or a part of the business management. So
these factors are directly dependent how an organizations products and
services fares in the market. As mentioned marketing strategy plays an
important role in the market success of a product or a service. Hence, all the
other aspects of business management are closely related and dependent on the
marketing strategy.

A Key Challenge Affecting Marketing Strategy of the Newspaper

Industry

Newspaper industry has been one of oldest and dynamic industry that has
enjoyed great success for a very long time. Newspaper industry has played a
dominant role in public communication in the past century. It has seen
tremendous growth and financial success in the second half of the 20 th century
(Picard, 2008). Even though the main purpose of the newspaper industry is to
make news available to public, its main source of income has been advertising,
especially, retail and classified advertising (Picard, 2008). 75 to 85 percent of
income of an average newspaper in the Unites States and European countries
is accounted by advertising. Newspaper advertising has witnessed a strong and
consistent growth in the 20th century and also a relationship was observed
between advertising spending and Gross Domestic Product (Picard, 2008). All
this was possible as there was literally very little competition in the advertising
sector (Picard, 2008).

The impeccable success of the newspaper industry is now on a decline. The

debate over the end of the newspaper industry has been doing rounds since the
last decade of the 20th century and early 21st century. But now there have been
observable effects of this decline around the world. In the US alone, The
Rocky Mountain News and the Ann Arbor have completely shut down
wherein Seattle Post Intelligencer has stopped printing and has completely

adopted web only model (Barbara, 2009). The Detroit Free Press and The
Detroit News have cut down their publishing to 3 days a week (Barbara,
2009). In the UK, all national newspapers have recorded a year on year fall.
Pearson's financial daily and Independent News & Media's the Independent
have both recorded a 3.17% and 14.02% year on year drop respectively
(Busfield, 2009). There also has been a drop in the number of people
employed by the newspaper industry. The number of people employed by the
newspaper industry has gone down by 18% over a 14 year period from 1990 to
2004 (Barbara, 2009). As per Pew Project findings, 14,000 reporting jobs have
been lost during 2001 to 2009 (Entman, 2010). All this is a strong indicator of
the demise of the newspaper industry.

One of the key challenges or reasons for the decline of the news paper industry
has been the internet. The situation is best summed up by Will Manley (2008),
when he states Thanks to the Internet, the entire newspaper industry is
fighting for its life. The internet has hit the core of the industry. It has
diverted both the advertisers and the readers away from the newspaper
industry. The development of internet and its advertising abilities are now
substituting the traditional newspaper classified advertising (Picard, 2008).
Internet advertising model has taken away a major chunk of the newspapers
primary source of income which is the classified and display advertising and
also it has led to a decrease in the readership as well (Gardner, 2009). The
newspaper share in the total advertising expenditure has decreased by one
third. Clearly the newspaper industry is losing its dominance over the
advertising world.

First, lets consider the effect of the internet on the readership. Internet has
achieved great penetrability today on a global stage and has connected the
world like no other communication means in the past. The internet, growing
mobility and dropping costs have lead the access of global multimedia
networks which link individuals, groups and news organizations (Entman,
2010). This has given the readers access to world news at absolutely no cost. It
gives them an opportunity to refine the news topics as per their individual
interests and also to search news articles from previous issues if required.
These advantages have started diverting readers from the traditional print
newspapers to digital news websites on the internet. There is a drastic increase
in the number of people going online or using wireless devices to get news and
information (Gardner, 2009). According to research news sites and digital
newspapers are among the most widely demanded and visited web sites
among the Internet community worldwide (Flavian & Gurrea, 2008). News
portals like Google News and Yahoo! News have contributed immensely to
this drastic diversion in readership. They dont just offer aggregated news
content but also are available 24/7 to anyone who has access to internet from
anywhere in the world (Barbara, 2009). Internet news portals and websites
have an added advantage. They allow an interaction between the readers and
also with the journalist who reports and edits the stories which is not possible
in the traditional news papers (Entman, 2010). This is in sync with the trend
that a great number of investigative stories about the government wrong doing
have appeared on various news and opinion bloggers than in the newspapers
(Manley, 2008). This indicates the trend that readers are looking for online

resources for news and information. Internet is now being accessed by mobile
phones and wireless devices which are not helping the newspaper industrys
cause. All these reasons combined, have lead to a decrease in the readership of
newspapers.

Lets now consider the threat posed by internet on the newspaper advertising
which is the financial back bone of the newspaper industry. Internet has come
out with a dynamic advertising model which has proved to be more effective
for classified advertising than in the newspapers. This has made a damaging
impact on the newspaper industry as classified advertising has been the
primary category of advertising sales and growth (Picard, 2008). The decline
in readership and the advantages that internet advertising offers has made
advertisers reconsider their overall advertising spending patterns. Concerns
over the effectiveness of advertising took more momentum due to the
economic downturn and recessions. This made advertisers explore new media
for advertising and internet was a great substitute (Picard, 2008). Internet had
great advertising models which attracted traffic and also advertisers could
target their customers which were not possible through newspapers. Models
like Google AdSense are a great example of this business model where people
were paid for displaying ads on their personal websites and for increasing the
traffic. Also there are agencies that pay people for viewing ads which means
the advertisements have maximum reach.

Huge revenues generated by

Google, Yahoo, MSN are an indicator where the advertisers are channeling
their dollars (Barbara, 2009). The newspaper industry is no more interesting to
the advertisers as it was a couple of decades ago.

Newspaper publishers seem to have taken the hardest hit from the
technological and economic challenges of publishing (Barbara, 2009). The
decline in readership and newspaper advertising has made the newspaper
industry less financially interesting for investors as they are looking for profits
and assets growth (Picard, 2008).

Strategic Analysis of the Newspaper Industry

As mentioned above, strategic analysis is the main and foremost component of
marketing management. A strategic analysis must analyze all the factors that
influence the marketing strategy of an organization. Below is the SWOT
analysis of the newspaper industry.

SWOT Analysis
SWOT (Strength, Weakness. Opportunities, Threats) analysis helps an
organization to determine where it is doing well and where it needs
improvement. SWOT analysis must be made relative to the market needs and
competition (Ferrell & Hartline, 2007). Following is the SWOT analysis of the
newspaper industry:

Strengths: The strength of the newspaper industry is that it targets a wide

range of customers across the globe. Newspaper industry has penetration
remote parts of the globe where there are no other sources of world news. This
is great strength as this gives the newspaper industry a large customer base.

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Weakness: The cutting of trees for paper has become a global issue under the
global warming context. The dependence of newspaper industry on paper has
become its biggest weakness as there is huge support from world wide for ebooks and papers. The newspaper industry must come up with an alternative
to paper.
Opportunities: There is a huge opportunity for the newspaper industry to
venture into other markets and use advanced technologies to reach the
customers or readers. Newspaper industry can join hands with electronic
media to come up new business strategies and plans. But this is an opportunity
which has to be used.
Threats: As mentioned above electronic media is an opportunity if used but
right now it is a threat to the newspaper industry especially in developed
countries. Electronic media have gained popularity in the last couple of
decades and have become a serious threat to the newspaper industry.

Conclusion
Strategic marketing management is very important for the success of any
organization. The marketers must understand the importance of this and use
the various tools and ideas at their disposal to come up with ideas and
strategies that will help the organization to beat the competition and succeed.
Being innovative in formulating strategies is the need of the hour for every
organization in order to survive in todays highly competitive industrial world.
In particular, newspaper industry has to adopt new ways and methods to
overcome the challenges posed by the technological advancements,
particularly internet. The importance of marketing management can not be

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stressed any further and its high time that the organizations world wide
realizes and implements marketing management in their business model.

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