The Analysis of Glamour Magazine - Case Study Example

Glamour Magazine: A Case Study Faculty I. Executive Summary II. Print Industry UK III. Environmental Analysis-PEST Analysis IV. Glamour i. Background ii. 4 P’s iii. Target Customer iv. Content v. SWOT V. Conclusion VI. Reference I. Executive Summary Print Industry in UK is one of the most competitive markets. This market is serving almost all segment of the society from children, teenager, young men and women, mid age people and elderly people of the society. These offer information, news, and gossips along with many other interactive features. UK market has attracted players from other parts of the world as well. One of the most successful among those is Glamour magazine of US based Condé Nast Publications. The magazine has been launched in UK in 2001. It was a well-planned strategy that worked out very well. The product was appreciated and accepted by its readers group. This paper covers introduction of UK print industry. It discusses various publications within that. The next section deals the analysis of Glamour magazine. Here environmental analysis with PEST analysis is done. The other section deals with 4 P’s of marketing for Glamour magazine in UK. i. Print Industry UK The print industry in UK is one of the oldest and largest industries. This industry directly employs more than 340,000 workers. People involve in other kind of employments like freelancers, short-term contract and others will increase the number further. This is a very competitive industry. Print industry serves the information need of large segment of population. Introduction of various other medias has little impact on the printing industry. The other media includes radio, Television, local cable and Internet. All these mode of infotainment has some attractions and some drawbacks. This is due to handiness, coverage and content along with other strategies the publications are not just surviving but also able to make good revenues. The Printing Industry is the 6th largest industry in the UK. Approximately 340,000 workers are employed in over 15,000 printing companies.1 The recent ABC figure has indicated that the leader in overall market is “What’s on TV”. Overall industry has faced some losses in its performance. The leader “What’s on TV” has seen a dip of approximately 10%. Other magazines like Glamour, which ranked 9 in the list of all magazines, experienced loss of 3.9 % while its closest competitor ad previous market leader “Cosmopolitan” at 19th position has experienced a loss of 0.3%. This indicates many things. It can be due to some promotional campaign or specific news covered on last circulation period or strategies adopted by Glamour last year. It can also be an indicator of more loyal reader of “Cosmopolitan” than “Glamour”. The dip in almost all magazines can be indicator of shift in the reader’s preferences and choices for media. The revenue model of most f the publication is advertisement driven. It is the readership and circulation number due to which the publications are able to fetch more advertisements and it’s the advertisement, which helps the companies to meet its cost and generate profits. Figure: ABC Circulation Figure Dec 20052 As obvious from the above table the overall industry has experienced a dip in their publications excluding publications like “NEW!” “The Economist”, “Closer”, “Radio Times” and “TV Choice”. Most of he lifestyle magazines and women magazines have faced major drops. ii. Environmental Analysis-PEST Analysis UK market is a matured and tough market. The readers are more demanding for the quality of the product. The target group of “Glamour” magazine is women of age group of 25-45 years. There are several other magazines in the same segment. The previous market leader Cosmopolitan is the nearest competitor for “Glamour”. There are various other monthly and weekly magazines, newspaper supplements and other mode of infotainment posing stiff competition for Glamour. Political This is a politically stable continent. The political structure encourages the investors to operate within UK abiding by certain law and regulations. This political stability attracts foreign players to operate here. Media enjoys number of rights here. It is a powerful influencing source of the society. The publication can stabilise its decisions regarding operations, printing units and establishing offices due to the political stability country offers. Economical Economically it is a matured and shrinking market. Cost of establishing any new unit is high. Cost of production of each copy of the magazine is higher than the price on which t is sold. Labour and professional charges are high. If Michael Porter’s five forces model is considered here, the entry barriers are high for the new players in the publishing industry for a magazine like this. The bargaining powers of the suppliers are less. This is due to the fact that there are limited numbers of established players. The bargaining powers of the distributors are high. The distribution channel management is complicate. The channel member look for more profits from selling magazines. The commissions and other benefits offered by the publications have impact on promoting magazines on their premise or stall. This is due to the fact that competition is high. Each competitor can offer more. This requires a proper and practical decision making for the distribution channel network. Socio-cultural There is a change in the trends. The time spent on reading books or magazines have got down as compared to the past. This is due to the fact that various other modes of entertainment and infotainment are available in the form of television, Internet and others. Young people are spending more time on Internet for their information needs, which offers more flexibility to them. This is one of the reasons why most of the publications are available online as well. The cost on online publishing is anyway lesser than the magazine production. Technological The print industry is no longer out of the ranges of technological changes. New technology to improve the product quality, production process and efficiency has been influencing the market to produce quality products. New designing tools like Adobe Indesign and other adobe products offer more flexibility to produce quality content with attractive use of graphics. The knowledge management and information management is another area influencing the print market. iii. Glamour This well-known magazine has wiped out the market leader position of Cosmopolitan magazine within three years of its launch in UK. This was due to the strategies the company adopted to launch the product. The strategies were based on product features to publicity and promotions. The adoption of proper distribution strategies, regular reader analysis, product updates and clear target has been some of the factors of success of this magazine in UK. Its distinguish handbag size and cut-price strategies has established its distinct place among target users. With a history stretching back to 1939, the US edition of Glamour is the largest circulation title in the Condé Nast stable, selling more than 2.2 million copies a month, and read for its mix of style, celebrity and real-life content. The brand was launched in Italy in 1992 where it established itself as one of the top three women’s titles, so expectations were high for the spring 2001 launch in the UK.3 iv. Background Glamour is an established name in UK. It is UKs first handbag-sized glossy magazine. It has turned the magazine market upside-down since its launch in 2001. It has knocked Cosmopolitan from its long-held No 1 spot to become the biggest-selling womens monthly style magazine in Europe. More than 32 million copies have been sold over the past five years with an average of 586,000 bought by women every month, effortlessly exceeding its initial circulation projections of 250,000.4 v. 4 P’s The product, price, place and promotion analysis of any product gives the picture of the strategies adopted by the company for the product. It helps in identifies the area where the company can work on to improve the overall marketing strategy. Product The product is targeted t an age group of 25-45. It contains content like house keeping, relationship, daily gossips, G-girls, G- boys, do and don’ts, health section, celeb section, food and drinks section and many others. Magazine size is one of its trademarks. The handbag size is easy to keep with the target reader. This provides flexibility to carry the magazine and read it wherever reader wants. The glossy paper, attractive design and overall presentation of the product is attractive. The product can be easily stood out on the newspaper stand or on the shelf of bookstalls. Similar content along with the interactivity are available on the web version of the magazine. The web version offers more interactivity and has sponsored links related to lifestyle cocktails, jewellery and many other related promotional stuff. Price Competitive pricing is one of the strategies adopted by the management of Glamour magazine. The magazine can be subscribed £ 14 for yearly subscription for 12 issues. Cosmopolitan’s one-year subscription (nine issues) is priced at £ 16.5. Competitive pricing along with content has offered value for money to the readers. This is one of the reason the magazine was able to change the outlook of UK women magazine market. Place Effective distribution channel management to ensure the availability of product is another strategy adopted by Glamour. When market is matured and competition is high it is always better to take care of all the important issues. Point of purchase is promoted in its strategies. The product is available at the readers spot and promotional materials are placed to promote the product and selling. Promotion The promotional strategy varies time to time according to the audience and the joint promotional offers available. The point of purchase strategies includes the handout of the promotional material of different shapes of the latest issue. These include either cover page of the latest issue or the content inside it. Apart from it joint promotional programs, advertorial contents, which contain advertisement and editorial stuff of the magazine on other online media and publicity materials are also being used for the promotions. Speaking to Magazine World, Anna Barratt, promotions manager of Glamour UK, said: "The advertorial is being designed, filmed and produced from the UK and will feature in our October issue. The same advertorial will then run simultaneously in the November issues across Europe. In all editions the images will be the same but the copy will be in the language of the magazine." 5 vi. Target Customer It has a specific target consumer group. It has been targeted for women of age group of 25 or late twenties to 45. The target consumer and their needs are clear to the company. The magazine reflects the choices of content of its target group. The cover page usually includes face of a celebrity. This helps the magazine to stand out. It gives out the look of confident, smart, clean, sexy, modern and beautiful for the target reader group. vii. Content Content of the magazine is targeted towards the need of the reader group. It is a women’s magazine. It includes all the matter related to women under different regular sections. The need of women of today is fashion, beauty, relationship, perfection, cooking and many others. The content of the magazine is written in a simple format. It has simple and stylish language. It is understandable and the flow of the language is simple and interactive. Use of graphics makes the overall look of the pages more attractive. The pictures include faces of celebrities, picture of fashion materials like jewellery, clothes, handbags, watches and many others, models, food items and recipes. viii. SWOT This is an analysis done for the internal and external environmental analysis for the company. It analyses strength of the brand or company on which it can leverage. It gives the details of the weakness upon which the company need to work to improve itself further. It lists the opportunity and threats of the market that helps in strategy formulation. Strength: One of the major strength of the magazine is the publishing group it belongs. It has a long history of serving women in various other parts of English speaking continents. The other strength is brand image among the target consumer group. It has an establish name. Content and quality of the product is another factor of strength. The proper addressing to the current issues has supported the sales in various occasions. The strong editorial and proper distribution channel management have helped the magazine to establish itself in UK’s market. Weakness: Though there is no such major weakness in the way it promotes and publicises the magazine, but the latest ABC reports with the drop on the sales figure of the magazine indicates the need of innovation in its front. It can include more articles on Television programs and probably can tie up with any of the real time show. These types of programs are in demand today. The magazine can upgrade the brand image and uplift the dropping sales by adopting new strategies for promotions. Opportunity One of the opportunities the magazine has is for the older segment of the society. Women of age group of 40-65 can form a very attractive niche segment. These women have various issues, which can be addressed with that. The segment is attractive in terms of volume and revenue and a proper analysis can help understanding the need for this group. Threat There are various threats for the magazine. The shrinking publishing industry overall poses a threat on all the players. The other threats include the technological changes, other media options for the same target group, competitors and others. ix. Conclusion Printing industry worldwide is going through a change. The globalisation has opened avenues for many players in the market. Due to the changes on technological fronts publishing companies are able to produce quality papers at lower cost. The revenue model of the magazines drives from the advertisements and the sponsors they get for their columns. This is the reason more of the magazines are sold at the price below to its manufacturing cost. Glamour magazine has been doing well in US. It is a well-accepted brand in UK. More than 58,5000 copies are sold every month to women in UK. The product handbag size, content and layout are user friendly. The product pricing is competitive. The distribution channel management supports the sales of the product. The product has distinct identity due to its size. II. 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