Fernando Mata General Management

March 8th, 2015 Assignment

The Economist - Written Assignment
1. Why has The Economist been so successful despite the terrible results of its competitors? The Economist has been able to succeed for different reasons. One of them has been the increase number in its target audience. The market's increase demand for sophisticated and challenging information has led this magazine to increase its subscribers and readers throughout the globe. Another reason, and perhaps the most important, is that they provide high quality analysis and straight to the point articles & news, which provide the reader a faster and easier way of going through and digesting information. The Economist has also been focused on providing a wide range of topics, not only news & articles surrounding on one aspect, such as politics and business, but also about cultural and innovative topics, that provide a global focus about what's currently going on around in different countries. Throughout the years this magazine has positioned itself as a reliable source of information that people trust. Thus, many readers and subscribers have a higher income and education than the average magazine consumer, which enables customers to keep subscribed even at economic crisis times. As well as taking into consideration that an economic crisis would be a relevant topic to learn and read about (causes, consequences, impact, etc.) in a magazine of this type. People are willing to pay for this magazine as well, because they see it as a premium magazine, or as they like to call it, a badge brand. It's not only about the content that the magazine provides, but also about the person who is enriching itself from it, thus promoting people to buy this product if they wish to make a statement about themselves and their general culture knowledge upon society. The Economist Group has also helped this magazine succeed by keeping up and adapting to it's environment and customer base behaviors. This can be most seen within the Internet aspect. By providing a web page, they were able to address and reach a new segment of customers that are also interested in learning and reading about these topics, but that would not necessarily purchase the physical copy of the magazine. The webpage as well, has helped The Economist build a closer relationship with its customers through the forums and debates, by involving them and inviting them to participate and discuss in a dynamic manner and not just staying still as a reader, but as an individual voice. These factors, along with the combination that competitors don't have the brand strength and content quality reliability, have enabled The Economist to position itself among one of the best magazines around the globe to provide information regarding current and intellectual subjects.

2. What were the sources of The Economist Group's competitive advantage in the publishing business? In this case their main and most important source of competitive advantage is their staff, culture and Organization Process. The fact that they have a group of people with high educational and academic backgrounds, dedicated to debate on high level grounds of argumentation and analysis, enables the magazine to provide readers around the globe quality articles & news like no other magazine in the business. The motto of working as a team, as a collective narrative in Anonymity, instead of isolated individual journalists, helps the magazine build better content and not fall into biases or selfperception/points of view. These along with a concise, straight to the point and short presentation, allows them to deliver a product that differentiates from other news & events information sources. Another great source was the achievement of their staff in the planning & execution of their marketing campaign and how they wanted to transmit this product perception to their customers. This enabled The Economist to build upon its brand as premium and a trustworthy reputation people seek in news and information articles. I also think that standing on the goal of providing on subjects of high interests, but on the matters they evaluate important, instead of delivering only what the customer is asking for, enables curiosity and spontaneity to retain their customer base, as they usually don't fall into articles they expect to read, and rather learn something of added value. These sources of competitive advantage have led to the success and achievements mentioned in the previous question. The challenge now for The Economist is to develop a new strategy based on the customer and environmental changes in order to establish appropriate sources of competitive advantage that will achieve these goals in order to differentiate from competition that is increasingly growing and trying to copy their format. By doing so they can keep providing the globe with a high quality product for the next years (success). 3. What recommendation would you make to chief executive Andrew Rashbass regarding the emergence of Mass Intelligence? I would recommend Mr. Rashbass to address this issue by expanding the information range in the magazine and the webpage by including general culture knowledge aspects such as: arts, music, museums, theater, history, artifacts, characters, biographies, etc. This would enable readers to learn not only on the topics they are providing, but along with the trend of learning and status around the globe. I would recommend to do this by applying the same editing format they follow with their current content: having their staff prepared on this type of aspects, debate on what is most important and added to customer value perception and essential to keep on short and straight to the point articles. By doing this we would provide what customers are looking for and an extra value for our current subscribers. By not following this course, the magazine could lose some people or potential subscribers to other competitor sources of information. Therefore, this action would keep The Economist in its core business but as well relevant and updated to customers and this new trend.