Publishing in the Knowledge Economy - DTI Home Page

Issues for competitiveness
Publishing in the knowledge economy
16.1 Better understanding and servicing
the end customer
The understanding of the customer’s habits and
use of information is vital in delivering the right
type of information to him at the right time in the
right context. Furthermore, establishing a closer
relationship enables better profiling for
advertisers which is essential if the forecast step
increase in direct mail advertising is not to turn
into a threat due to the increased availability of
techniques to major corporations and retailers in
identifying consumer usage patterns.
16.1.1 Strengths and opportunities
There has been a recognition by publishers of
the need to get closer to their end-users; 50%
and 64% of the respondents to our survey
indicated getting closer to the customer as
being an opportunity with great potential for
their business in three years and 10 years
respectively (Figures 16.1 and 16.2).
The wide-adoption of Internet marketing
technologies by most publishers (as evidenced
by the e-commerce impact assessment) has
pushed both small and large publishers closer
to the customer.
The newspapers and consumer magazine
industries have focused on reader groups which
has enabled them to collect good statistics on
these groups and develop brands. This forms
the basis for extension to more targeted
knowledge about the reading and buying habits
of these end customers.
The business publishers, including magazines
and directories, have started tailoring their
products to individual users. The business
model here has enabled the revenue streams to
continue to flow from corporate or institutional
sources while other sources of revenue have
been derived from additional services sold to
the end user. Many business publishers have
created new end-user services attached to their
traditional brands which are resulting in getting
closer to the end customer and generating
increased revenues.
16.1.2 Challenges
Publishers almost across the board have not
sold directly to end-users, but instead use
intermediaries for the selling and distribution
processes. This has built relatively efficient and
cost effective supply chains, but has led to the
culture of, as a book publisher said, “let’s push
as much as we can out there, and hope
someone will buy it”. This has been less so in
the case of magazines and newspapers, but
even here information has been collected in
terms of user groups rather than individual
users, mainly for the purposes of driving
advertising revenue rather than understanding
the needs of the reader better and developing
an ongoing relationship with them. This is
becoming more important as demands on
consumers’ time grow and loyalty weakens.
The ability to target customers with
contextualised, time sensitive content is
essential to the successful exploitation of
content on new platforms including warding off
the threat of free online content. To do this,
customers must be profiled very accurately and
carefully. (See ‘Achieving a better balance in
revenue streams’, Section 16.3.) There will be
an increasing need to understand what
consumers and professional information users
do on the Internet and how they use the
medium. This is helped by the use of new
technology which enables the easier profiling.
The industry also needs to address the way it
currently licences content to third parties and
customers. As the industry removes the
wrappers from its content it is important to make
it easy for customers to licence and re-use the
content. There are two main aspects to this.
1. Making the deal to use content must be
made simpler. The use of Digital Rights
Management technology will help
standardise licences and control of the terms
made by the publisher and understood and
adopted by licensees and customers. There
are however, different licensing bodies at
present for books and magazines on the one
hand, and newspapers on the other. The
industry should make an attempt to >
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