Hardly a day goes by without some bad news for the print publishing industry in the USA and Europe, due to declining readership. Much of this decline is attributed to the rise of the web as a source of news, analysis and entertainment. While both print newspapers and magazines face disruption from the web, the premise of this paper is that magazines, due to their unique characteristics (richer, special-interest content, lower frequency of publication), are able to use the web better than newspapers to add value to consumers. When magazines have multiple channels (hard copy print edition and online web sites), an interesting research question is, what is the relative impact of each channel (print versus web) on building usage and loyalty? Specifically, this paper seeks to answer the following research questions: (1) are magazine web sites complementary to or a substitute for print magazines? (2) what are the implication of this behavioral trend for magazines? (3) what business models and marketing tools should be used to benefit from this trend?
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