MARKETING RESEARCH

ON
READERSHIP OF TELEGRAPH NEWSPAPER IN
GUWAHATI
PRESENTED BY
SWARUP MAJUMDER
ROLL NO. 02

AND

TINASHREE KASHYAP

ROLL NO. 37

2ND SEMESTER

DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

GAUHATI UNIVERSITY

A study of the competitive analysis of the readership of THE TELEGRAPH in the city of Guwahati. It was a
study conducted across the student group of GIMT, ROYAL BUSINESS SCHOOL, GAUHATI UNIVERSITY
AND GAUHATI COMMERCE COLLEGE and residents of Lankeswar area.
 INTRODUCTION

The Telegraph is a Kolkata; (Calcutta) based broadsheet newspaper in English. It is owned by the
ABP Limited (an enterprise of Ananda Publishers).In 2008, it is considered by the Audit Bureau of
Circulations, India, to be the fastest growing daily (in terms of circulation) in eastern India with a
circulation of 484,971 daily. According to Indian Readership Survey (IRS) 2008 the Telegraph is
the fourth most-widely read English newspaper in India (after Times of India, Hindustan Times
and The Hindu) with a readership of 2.9 million. According to National Readership Survey (NRS)
2006 The Telegraph has total readership of 1.4 million.

The Telegraph mainly published from eastern India is noted for its extensive coverage of
Indian foreign policy and its focused reporting on India's troubled North-East. The Telegraph is
also published from Guwahati (to cater to the entire northeast), Siliguri (for North Bengal and
Sikkim), Jamshedpur’ and Ranchi (for Jharkhand). The Telegraph comes with five editions
Calcutta edition, South Bengal edition, North Bengal edition, Northeast edition (Guwahati split),
Jharkhand edition (Jamshedpur, Jharkhand and Ranchi splits).

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 CONTENTS

SL ITEMS PAGE NO.

NO.
1.1 INTRODUCTION 2

1.2 THE RESEARCH PROBLEM 4

1.3 OBJECTIVE 5

1.4 (i) EXPLORATORY RESEARCH 5,6

1.4 THE RIVALS 7

(ii)
1.5 QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGNING 8

1.6 SAMPLING TECHNIQUE 8

1.7 DATA ENTRY AND PROCESSING 8

1.8 RESEARCH,FINDINGS AND 8

INFERENCES
1.9 CHARTS AND FIGURES 9,10,11

1.10 PURPOSE SPECIALISATION 11

1.11 CUSTOMER RESPONSES 12

1.12 MAKE YOUR CHOICE 13

1.13 CONCLUSION 14

1.14 ANNEXURE 14, 15,16

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THE RESEARCH PROBLEM

With the Hindustan Times launching in Guwahati in March this year,

the city now publishes seven English dailies, that, along with 13 Assamese, three Bengali and
two Hindi papers add up to a total of 25 papers that hit the stands every morning. Waiting in
the wings: the Times of India (TOI) that has begun publishing a ‘national edition’ from Calcutta,
in what could well be a dry run for a satellite edition of the paper from Guwahati. TOI, it is
learnt, is aggressively looking for a business associate in the city. The paper would be the fourth
metropolitan daily to enter the Guwahati market, after The Telegraph, Asian Age and Hindustan
Times, all of whom now print local editions here. The present 25 between them claim a
combined circulation figure of over 6.5 lakh. This would be in addition to the circulation of at
least three dailies published from other parts of the state.

The total revenue generated from state government and NF Railway

advertisements, though, is far below the requirements of the growing giant that the newspaper
industry in Guwahati threatens to be. While PG Barooah, Editor of The Assam Tribune, the
oldest English daily in the state refuses to comment on the state of affairs, others such as
Manoj Goswami, editor of the newly launched Oxomiya Janaxadharan, won’t describe the
advertisement market beyond “good”. Atanu Bhuyan, editor of Oxomiya Khabar, describes the
market as “very poor, due to the lack of industries in the region”. The Khabar group now also
prints HT’s Guwahati edition.

The bottom-line: that while the Guwahatian has been bombarded

with new papers quite routinely, he has also been witness to quite a few bowing out of the
race. In the past ten years or so, at least four English papers printed in Guwahati have downed
their shutters. Some ‘frontline’ papers have diversified, investing in high-end clubs and
restaurant chains in the country and abroad.

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OBJECTIVES

The following objectives will form the part of our study.

1.1 Readership of telegraph newspaper in the city.

1.2 How to enhance the readership of the paper.
1.3 Competitive analysis of telegraph with other English dailies and assamese local editions.

EXPLORATORY RESEARCH

A beginner’s survey conducted across the various distributors of newspapers pan

Guwahati and the near about outskirts (viz. Nagaon, Pathsala) revealed some interesting
statistics which has been reflected in the following lines

Category Language Number of Circulation during

Publication 01.01.2008 to
31.012.2009
Daily Assamese 12 540467
English 4 132158
Bengali 5 187835
Hindi 4 94707
Boro 2 49790
Bi-Weekly Assamese 3 49824
Bengali 2 16930
Weekly Assamese 21 200187
Bengali 10 38941
Hindi 1 6830
English 3 12115
Manipuri 1 5012
(Bishnupuria)
Fortnightly Assamese 3 13000 Excluding
"Parantic"
Monthly Assamese 7 63473
Manipuri 1 13975
Bi-monthly Assamese 2 15398

Source: Statistical Handbook Assam and telephonic conversations with the major distributors.

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An excerpt from a publication of FRONTLINE (a national magazine)

“Newspaper readership has grown by about 20 per cent from 131 million in 1999 to 155
million in 2002.Readership growth has been faster than literacy growth, which expanded by 13
per cent during the same period. Newspapers contributing to this rise in readership were mainly
in English, Hindi, Marathi and Kannada. The Hindi dailies, Dainik Bhaskar and Dainik Jagran,
have the highest readership, with 13 million and 12.6 million readers respectively. No English
newspaper figured amongst the 10 most widely read newspapers in the country. The
prominence given to the English press is disproportionate to its actual readership. Even in urban
India, only one English daily, The Times of India, is amongst the top 10. The fastest growing
dailies are the Assamese dailies in urban areas (51.8 per cent increase) and the Bengali dailies
in rural areas (129 per cent rise). Other high growth dailies are published in Oriya, Hindi,
Punjabi, Kannada and Marathi. The highest readership was found to be in Kerala.”

Our exploratory research reflected many aspects of readership of newspapers in the state
capital. We had got in touch with journalists during this research. The state capital Guwahati
witnesses the publication of 20 dailies; half of them in the Assamese language. Seven of these
are published from more than one centre, whereas three Assamese dailies claim to enjoy over
1, 00,000 circulation. The print media has created 8,000 direct jobs, and provides indirect
employment to 20,000 throughout the state with a population of 26 million. There are 400
working journalists in Guwahati. The research shows that The Telegraph has a tough battle
everyday with respect to competitors for the regional sentiment of the mass as a whole drives
them to the Assamese newspapers. Moreover, even if they prefer English newspapers then the
aforesaid sentiment leads them to the Assam Tribune, an English daily newspaper published
from Guwahati and plays an important socio-political role in the lives of the people of Assam.

A pilot survey by me and my teammate across the city buses throughout the route from Kachari
to Lankeswar found majority of the people in the age group of 35-55 years being loyal readers
of Amar Asom, student groups from the engineering backgrounds preferred The Telegraph
(more for its supplements etc, graphiti and knowhow). A survey with the MBA students from
Department Of Business Administration, Gauhati University; Royal Business School and GIMT
had their views recorded with us through our questionnaire which will be presented in our
report. They felt that versatility was what they wanted in their newspapers.

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UP CLOSE WITH THE CLOSEST RIVALS OF TELEGRAPH:

We have listed some of the toughest and closest rivals of THE TELEGRAPH.

TIMES OF INDIA:

The Times of India (TOI) is a popular English-language broadsheet newspaper in India. It

has the largest circulation among all English-language newspapers in the world, across all
formats (broadsheet, tabloid, compact, Berliner and online).It is owned and managed by
Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. which is owned by the Sahu Jain family. In 2008, the newspaper
reported that (with a circulation of over 3.14 million) it was certified by the Audit Bureau of
Circulations as the world's largest selling English-language daily newspaper, placing as the 8th
largest selling newspaper in any language in the world. According to the Indian Readership
Survey (IRS) 2010, the Times of India is the most widely read English newspaper in India with a
readership of 13.4 million. This ranks the Times of India as the top English newspaper in India
by readership.

AMAR ASOM:

The Amar Asom is an ABC certified Assamese daily published by G. L. Publications Ltd. It
was established on April 21, 1997 and is being simultaneously published from Jorhat, Lakhimpur
and Guwahati. It has a wide network of correspondents covering each and every corner of the
Northeastern region of India. The current circulation of the paper is 70,474.

Supplements

Apart from the main paper, the daily is ornamented with some other supplements.

1. A 4 page supplement on Health, Culture, Nature and Youth is published on every

Saturday.
2. Purvachal, a 32 page magazine is published on every Sunday.
3. Every year in April-May, an annual supplement is published.

ASSAM TRIBUNE:

The Assam Tribune is an English daily newspaper published from Guwahati, Assam. It
plays an important socio-political role in the lives of the people of Assam. It is perhaps best
known for its credibility in news and features content as for its dour and unassuming format.
First published from Dibrugarh, it is now published from Guwahati and Dibrugarh.The present
editor is Prafulla Govinda Baruah, a son of Radha Govinda Baruah, and has PJ Baruah as the
Executive Editor. The paper has been the first to publish quite a few news stories; the most well
known being its reports on the conquest of Mt Everest and on Dalai Lama, who entered India

7
through the Arunachal Pradesh border. All other newspapers from India and abroad carried
those reports the following day.

QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN

The questionnaire that we had set had both open-ended questions and closed-ended
questions. We had questions set with the objective of determining the areas where The
Telegraph can emphasize on so as to be the most preferred newspaper in the city. We have
followed the popular belief of constructing a simple questionnaire for the sample we have
selected.

SAMPLING TECHNIQUE

The sampling technique that we have followed in our marketing research is simple
random sampling.

DATA ENTRY AND PROCESSING

Microsoft excel sheet has been used for data entry.

THE RESEARCH AND FINDINGS

The research reflected that the readers of the newspapers have the following attributes
in their mind while getting a copy of their most suitable newspaper. The readers have allotted
rating points to the various attributes of THE TELEGRAPH. The different attributes that we took
into consideration for our study and the abbreviations that we considered for our convenience
are listed below. We have taken the sample size as 20.

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ATTRIBUTES ABBREVIATIONS

SIMPLICITY SIM

AVAILABILITY AVL

ADEQUACY OF INFORMATION AOF

ACCESSABILITY ACC

DESIGNING OF THE PAPER DOP

SUPPLEMENTS SUP

SEQUENCE OF PRESENTATION OF SPF

INFORMATION

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 SL. NO. SIM AVL AOF ACC DOP SUP SPF
1 5 5 5 5 3 5 4
2 3 4 3 4 3 4 3
3 3 4 3 4 2 4 2
4 4 5 3 3 3 5 3
5 2 3 2 4 1 4 3
6 1 3 4 5 3 2 4
7 4 5 2 4 2 1 4
8 3 2 4 2 5 3 4
9 3 4 3 4 2 5 4
10 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
11 3 5 3 5 2 3 2
12 4 4 3 4 3 5 3
13 4 3 5 3 4 2 4
14 4 3 5 3 5 3 5
15 3 4 3 2 4 4 3
16 2 4 4 5 4 3 3
17 3 4 3 3 3 4 3
18 2 5 3 5 4 4 3
19 3 4 4 4 4 5 4
20 3 4 3 3 4 3 2
AVERAGE 3.2 4.0 3.5 4.05 3.35 3.70 3.25
N.B. - The sl. No. In the above table refers to the numbering of the respondents in
chronological order.

SCALING PROCESS

The methodology followed here is the famous Likert scale. The attributes were
measured on a scale of 1-5.

The above table is presented in graphical form so as to facilitate in drawing inference.

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 AVG VALUES

SIM
AVL
AOF
ACC
DOP
SUP
SPF

INFERENCE

The above chart depicts that accessibility, availability and the supplements of THE
TELEGRAPH are the main components that drive the readers towards it. They form the pillars of
its success in the city. This is the regions where THE TELEGRAPH can strengthen further so as to
be the market leader in the specific areas.

PURPOSE SPECIALISATION

The “purpose specialisation” is a study that we had undertaken so as to study the

perceptions of our sample with regards to the purpose that they have in their minds. We have
taken the following purpose or sections of a newspaper and recorded the responses of the
sample as regards to which paper will they subscribe so as to get acquainted with the optimum
amount of information for that specific section.

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CUSTOMER RESPONSES

In the table below we have recorded the average responses of the respondents. We
have taken the responses regarding three newspapers viz. THE TELEGRAPH, TIMES OF INDIA
(TOI) AND ASSAM TRIBUNE.

PURPOSE THE TELEGRAPH TOI ASSAM TRIBUNE

SPORTS 5.95 5.89 4.09

BUSINESS 5.05 6 3.50

CURRENT AFFAIRS 6.10 5.9 5

REGIONAL 5 3.50 6.5

INFORMATION

GRAPHICAL PRESENTATION OF READER’S PERCEPTIONS

Chart Title
18
5
16
4.09 3.5 6.5
14
12 5.9
5.89 6
10 AT
8 3.5 TOI
6 6.1 TELEGRAPH
5 5.05 5
4
2
0
SPORTS BUSINESS C.AFFAIRS R.INFO

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SCALING PROCESS

We have used semantic differential scaling in measuring the perception of the readers.
A 7-point scale is used here with two bipolar levels (viz. Adequate and inadequate in all the
cases).

INFERENCE

The inference that we can draw here is that regional information and business are the
regions where TELEGRAPH is lagging behind when compared to its closest rivals whereas in
sports it’s only just ahead of TOI which implies that it has to emphasise or lay more stress in this
areas.

SUGGESTIONS

The suggestions that can be provided at this stage will be more coverage of the local
issues which implies more investment in appointing news reporters in the nook and corners of
the state. A change in approach of the newspaper’s authorities regarding deleting majority of
the local based news and publishing just the “page 3” news of the state and political news.
Moreover the newspaper’s failure to cover all the eight north-eastern states is another major
cause leading to the capitalisation by its closest competitors.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

This involved selecting a particular newspaper for a particular purpose. The respondents
were given three options, viz. THE TELEGRAPH, TOI and THE ASSAM TRIBUNE and were asked to
select any one four a particular attribute.

OPTIONS THE TELEGRAPH TOI ASSAM TRIBUNE

INFORMATION
CONTENT
DESIGN OF THE
PAPER
SUPPLEMENTS

SEQUENCE OF
INFORMATION

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N.B. THE STAR SIGN REFERS THAT THE PARTICULAR PAPER WAS SELECTED FOR THE
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

INFERENCE

An average of all the responses showed that THE TELEGRAPH lagged behind in terms of
adequate information. The low average was the result of lack of regional information and
shortage of business news. The suggestions with respect to the aforesaid causes are mentioned
in the initial portion of our survey.

CONCLUSION

The study shows that THE TELEGRAPH is making its presence feel amidst the presence of
a cluster of English, Assamese and other dailies. Its defects with respect to lack of regional
information if overcome then there are no way stopping it from being the most preferred
newspaper of the state. Moreover respondent’s responses reflect that they want more of
regional news, cost reduction and lesser advertisements in their form of “THE TELEGRAPH”

ANNEXURE

QUESTIONNAIRE

1. NAME:

2. AGE :

3. SEX : MALE

FEMALE

4. WHICH ENGLISH DAILY DO YOU SUBSCIBE?

THE TELEGRAPH

TIMES OF INDIA

ASSAM TRIBUNE

ECONOMIC TIMES

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5. WHICH ACCORDING TO YOU IS THE TOP THREE DAILIES? (Rank them as 1st,
2nd, 3rd)

THE TELEGRAPH

TIMES OF INDIA

ASSAM TRIBUNE

ECONOMIC TIMES

6. WHICH SECTION OF THE NEWSPAPER ATTRACTS YOU MORE?

7. WHY IS THE NEWSPAPER YOU SUBSCRIBE IS THE MOST SUITABLE FOR YOU?

8. HOW WOULD YOU RANK THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE NEWSPAPER OF YOUR

NEED?

(1-LEAST IMPORTANT 2-LESS IMPORTANT 3-IMPORTANT 4- MORE IMPORTANT 5- MOST

IMPORTANT)

AVAILABILITY-

ADEQUACY OF INFORMATION-

ACCESSABILITY-

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SIMPLICITY-

9. HOW WILL YOU RATE THE FOLLOWING ATTRIBUTES OF THE TELEGRAPH,

TIMES OF INDIA AND ASSAM TRIBUNE?

(1-INADEQUATE 7-ADEQUATE)

THE TELEGRAPH TOI ASSAM TRIBUNE

SPORTS

BUSINESS
CURRENT AFFAIRS

REGIONAL
INFORMATION

10. WHICH DAILY WOULD YOU CHOOSE AMONGST TELEGRAPH, TOI AND ASSAM
TRIBUNE FOR THE FOLLOWING PURPOSES?

INFORMATION CONTENT-

DESIGN-

SEQUENCE OF PRESENTATION OF INFORMATION-

SUPPLEMENTS-

11. IF YOU WERE MADE THE EDITOR OF YOUR FAVOURITE NEWSPAPER THEN
WHAT CHANGES WOULD YOU LIKE TO BRING SO AS TO MAKE IT THE MOST
PREFERRED INFORMATION SOURCE?

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