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Publishing in the knowledge economy
The industry today
CHAPTER
2
Concepts of competitiveness
2.1 Introduction
This section of the report will try to paint a
picture of the industry as it currently is,
assessing its performance using a set of
indicators for the sector as a whole and its
constituent parts. It will begin by discussing the
conceptual and practical issues we encountered
in selecting the indicators and attempting to
source data to match them. Then, we discuss
and illustrate drivers for the publishing industry,
including advertising trends, consumer spending
and time use, and demographics. We go on to
examine some cross-industry and international
comparisons, followed by a discussion of
selected findings at the level of publishing and
then at sub-sector level. There is then a
discussion of the response of the publishing
industry to the Internet, which is followed by
a section summarising the areas where data
is unavailable or unreliable.
Following the quantitative analysis, there is
a section describing the strengths and
weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing
the industry. This is based on desk research
and on the performance indicators, as well as
the questionnaire responses, interviews and
focus groups held during the course of the
project. Finally, this section discusses scenarios
facing the industry.
2.2 Sector competitiveness as a concept
Competitiveness is about the extent to which
an individual firm, or national industry, can
survive and sustain itself, and the agility with
which it can respond to opportunities and
threats. A firm’s competitive advantage can lie in
the ability to produce at low cost; in proprietary
assets; in a high rate of innovation; in producing
high quality well differentiated products, and so
on. This depends on the industry in which it is
engaged, the stability of technology, barriers to
entry, the rate of entry and exit in the market
and so forth.
Sectoral competitiveness analysis throws up
some methodology issues. While it is fairly
straightforward to understand what is meant by
the competitiveness of an individual company,
the notion of the competitiveness of an entire
sector is more problematic. In the first place,
there is the question of the definition of a sector,
which is rarely clear cut. In the second place,
within any sector there will be some companies
that are extremely competitive and others that
are failing. In terms of definition, sectors are
bound to be blurred at the edges. It may well be
that within a broad sector, there are a number
of identifiable sub-sectors, some of which are
growing and healthy, others of which are
declining. Activity may be migrating away from
some sub-sectors into others within the sector,
or into an adjacent sector.
The economy is in constant flux, and it is
pointless to be too obsessed with definitions.
The competitiveness analysis must aim to
capture this movement and the common issues
and problems for the sector. Competitiveness is
also a comparative concept by its very nature.
This raises the issue what should publishing’s
performance be compared to – other sectors
of the UK economy, international
competitors or both?
2.3 The competitiveness of publishing
– conceptual issues
Measuring the competitiveness of publishing is
particularly prone to the problems outlined
above, firstly of definition, secondly of
comparison, and finally of data availability
(which is related to the first two).
2.3.1 Definition
Publishing has historically been linked with the
manufacturing process of printing. The two
activities have become increasingly decoupled
in recent years, even more in the UK than in the
rest of Europe, but the linkage has left a legacy
of intertwined statistics. Secondly, the activities
of publishing companies – especially the largest
and most important ones – have increasingly
come to span the whole gamut of print products,
and have expanded beyond print on paper to
electronic publishing, conferences and
exhibitions, training and audio-visual media. But
this shift is not reflected in the way that the
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