Presentation on Summer Project

THE TIMES OF INDIA, Ahmedabad (BENNETT COLEMAN & CO. LTD)

Project Title

ANALYZING THE READERSHIP OF ENGLISH NEWSPAPER AMONG YOUNGSTERS

IN AHMEDABAD Organzation Guide: Mr. Subodh Kumar

Group Members: Nihali Dubey

Reema Rafaliya

Print Opportunity

Newspaper Market in Gujarat

Gujarati Newspaper• Gujarat Samachar• Divya Bhaskar• Sandesh• Sambhav

Gujarat Samachar is the leading Gujarati Newspaper

English Newspaper• Times of India• Indian Express• DNA• Business Standard

Times of India is the largest daily circulated English newspaper

Facts about Ahmedabad

• Ahmedabad the commercial capital has a high standard of living and literacy and growth rate

Total Population : 5,808,378Males :3,069,871Females :2,738,517Literacy :79.87% overall Publication CirculationGujarat Samachar 211259Sandesh 135789The Times of India 72000

Ahmedabad: Major Competitors in English Newspaper

• DNA

– Promoted by Dainik Bhaskar group– Worked on aggressive hoarding campaign– DNA promotes the concept of Value for money spent on the daily – DNA money launched to cover financial news

• Business Standard

– It is a financial daily from Business Standard Ltd (BSL) – It is one of the most sorted newspapers after Economic Times for financial

news – Its regular weekday supplements, such as The Smart Investor, The Strategist

and Weekend

Indian Express

Promoted by Goenka Group with a tag line: Journalism with Courage

It is a newspaper focused on the Indian economy, stock markets, and fiscal policies The daily suffers visibility due to poor marketing strategy Times of India It is the highest English daily circular in AhmedabadPublished in eight editions across India it covers events, politics, entertainment and sports.Strong national brand & high user acceptability

About Times of India

The Times of India (TOI) is a leading English-language daily newspaper in

India with a sale of around 2.6 million copies .It has an average issue

readership of around 7 million

It is owned and managed by Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd

The highest circulated English daily in the world

Published in eight editions from India’s eight ‘powerhouses of events,

politics, entertainment and sports.

Project Description

Project Description• Objective

– Analyzing the readership of English newspaper amongst youngsters in Ahmedabad.

• Scope of Work– Scope of work included finding various parameters that would be

required to encourage the youngsters in Ahmedabad for English newspaper readership.

• Deliverables– Needs and problems faced by youngsters while reading The Times of

India in Ahmedabad.– Report on English newspaper reading preferences amongst

youngsters of Ahmedabad.

Methodology

• Formulating Questionnaire– Reading preferences

• Field Survey

• Inferences based on analysis– Hypothesis Testing– Descriptive Statistics

• Recommendations

DATA ANALYSIS

SAMPLE SIZE

• Target population is the urban part of the Ahmedabad city• The sampling method chosen here is quota sampling• The target statistics here is a proportion• The population proportion is 0.89 which is the literacy rate of

the target population• The z value associated with the 95 % confidence level is

z= 1.96• Therefore the sample size, • n = 0.89(1 – 0.89) (1.96)2 / (0.05)2 = 150 (approximately)

SAMPLE DESCRIPTION

• Gender ratio • Occupation Distribution • Educational Background

Detailed Analysis• Readership of other news papers• News Paper No. of readers GujaratSamachar 20 Sandesh 18 ET 11 DNA 08 The Hindu 02 Rajasthan Patrika 04 Indian Express 12 Divya Bhaskar 43 BS 10 AM 22

Others 00

English Adaptability

0

20

40

60

80

100

Comfortable

NotComfortable

• 93 of the respondents were comfortable with the English language.

Reasons for not reading TOI.

• 57 out of 150 respondents said that it is the pricing that affects them the most .

• 4 out of 150 said that the supplementary provided by TOI is not up to the mark.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Price

Comfort

Vernacular

Gifts

Competition

Availability

Supply

Dose recommendation work?

• 50 out of 150 respondents said that they will definitely read it if experts suggest that reading English newspapers regularly improves their command over English .

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

D Y

Y

N S

N

D N

Is reading TOI a status symbol for you?

• 83 said yes that it is a status symbol.0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Df.Y

Yes

Not Sure

No

Def.N

Hypothesis

• Null Hypothesis H0: Preference for reading newspaper amongst youngsters is independent of the given reasons.

• Alternative Hypothesis Ha: Preference for reading newspaper amongst youngsters is not independent (i.e.dependent) of the given reasons.

Contingency TablePricing Comfortability with

LanguageVernacularLanguage

Free Gifts Competitors Availability Supplements Total

Students 12 17 7 4 7 7 7 61

Parents 27 13 17 15 8 7 2 89

Total 39 30 24 19 15 14 9 150

Analysis

• The observed value of chi-square 23.43, is greater than the critical value, 21.03, so the null hypothesis is rejected.

• Which means that the preference for reading newspaper among youngsters is dependent on the given reasons.

Recommendation • The supplements provided by the Company should be more in

numbers i.e. for the whole week.• They should provide women and children supplements.• Earlier Ahmedabad Mirror was a supplement with TOI but

now it’s a different product and its price is low, so people have shifted from TOI to AM. So it may be a threat for TOI in future. The Company should see to it.

• The students are discouraged as they find the language difficult so a new column for students like words for the day .

• Some offers on the festive seasons should be offered.

Observations

• Newspaper is the only product which is sold for less than its cost.

• There exist a high potential of TOI as 62% of respondents were comfortable in reading and comprehending English language.

• Reducing the price of the newspaper looks like an attractive offer for the customers.

• Language plays an important role to attract the nonreaders as most of the students were more comfortable with their language i.e. Gujarati.

• Customers are indifferent towards features such as the layout of the newspaper, whether the articles are in a new web-based visuals format.

•The students need encouragement i.e. if their professors or friends suggest them to read it then only they will read it.•While dealing in mass we found that the respondants gave fake excuses.•TOI is the first newspaper which introduced the zigzag pricing.•The reasons why TOI is the leader amongst English newspapers are 1) The product itself 2) Vendors’ earnings are less with other newspapers.•TOI runs various campaigns throughout the India like Lead India, Teach India,Vote India, Clean Ahmedabad.

Changes Required • Consistent distribution of supplements• Less ads.• Daily yoga/ exercise tips/ column on health• More statistics/ graphs charts with business news.• Simpler language.• Articles on Science and Discovery.• Add pages on fashion and beauty.• Add local grocery/ vegetable rates.• Add important phone numbers column.• Reduce indecent pictures.• Special supplements on special occasions.

Learning: • We have applied the knowledge of research design in designing our

research to analyze the preferences and perceptions of readers.• We have used the knowledge of different questionnaire and form designs

to prepare our questionnaire for the project work.• We have used the knowledge of different scaling techniques in making

our questionnaire.• We have applied Chi-square method and data preparation to analyze the

collected data.• For meetings: Always prepared with a short PPT and summary of work

done.• Keeping everybody informed makes the work easy to execute.• Stay patient on field , it enables to maintain the accuracy of study.• Appointments always help.• Thorough knowledge about the content (TOI) is necessary while

convincing the people.

References • www.enintelligence.com• www.wikipedia.com• www.mckinseyquarterly.com• www.cmocouncil.org• http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/• http://ejc.sagepub.com/• http://etd.lib.ttu.edu• http://www.dnaindia.com/• http://books.google.com/books?id=Jzr6mXL8omAC• www.surveysystem.com/sdesign.htm• www.statpac.com/surveys/questionnaire-design.htm• www.indiastat.com