SWOT ANALYSIS

STRENGTHS

 Excellent editorials
 Favourable brand reputation
 Variety of supplements
 Useful annual subscriptions
 Highly regarded stock market analysis
 Regional (hindi) publications

WEAKNESS

 Less marketing efforts

 Circulation of the paper is limited
 No Sunday edition
 Independent newspaper
 High price of the newspaper

OPPURTUNITIES

 Huge untapped market

 More number of people dealing in financial markets
 Increase oppurtunities in tier 1 and tier 2 cities

THREATS

 Established newspaper coming out with business daily

 New publication offering their products at a lower price
 Business channels on television
SHARE HOLDERS

The majority of the shares of business standard are held by KOTAK Mahindra
followed by great eastern shipping corporation. The share holding pattern of the
company is given below:

KOTAK MAHINDRA 53.00%

GREAT EASTERN SHIPPING CORPORATION 27.76%

OTHERS 19.24%

IDENTIFYING COMPETITORS

It would seem as a simple task to identify the competitors. Economic times is can
be the biggest challenge for business standard. But it cannot be the only one
competitors for the company. The company has to face competition from a range
of companies. A competition can be much broader than obvious. And it is more
likely to be hurt by emerging or new competitors or new technologies than current
competitors.

ANALYZING COMPETITORS:

Once the company identifies tits primary competitors, it must ascertain their
strategies, objectives, strengths and weakness.

STRATEGIES

A group of firms following the same strategy in a given market is called a strategic
group. The company develop strategic groups based on product quality and level of
vertical integration.
OBJECTIVES

Once the company has identified its main competitors and their strategies it must
ask, what each competitor is seeking in the market place? Many factors shape a
competitors objectives, including size, history, current management and financial
situation.

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESS:

A company needs to gather information about each competitors strengths and

weakness. Some of the attributes on which the company can keep a tab are

 Customer awareness
 Product quality
 Product availability
 Technical assistance
 Selling staff

In general the company has to monitor three variables when analyzing competitors

 Share of the market

 Share of mind- The percentage of customers who named the competitor in
responding to the statement, “name the first company that comes to mind in
the industry”.
 Share of heart- The percentage of customers who named the competitors in
responding to the statement “name the company from which you prefer to
buy the product”.
SUBSCRIPTION MODULE

COLLECTION OF CHEQUE DEPOSIT OF CHEQUE OF CLEARANCE INFO GIVEN

FROM THE CUSTOMER THE CUSTOMER WITH TO THE HEAD OFFICE
THE BANK

START INFO GIVEN TO

THE BRANCH

DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL

PRINTING PRESS AGENTS HAWKERS/VENDORS

TRANSPORTER CENTRE IN CHARGE READERS

MORNING DEPOT DEALER

PAYMENT MODULE

Head office customers vendors

Branch office Agents

BRANDING AND MARKET PENETRATION

BRANDING

Brand building enhances brand equity directly through advertising and indirectly
through promotion

A brand represents many more intangible aspects of a product or service: a

collection of feelings and perceptions about quality, image, lifestyle and status.

It creates in the mind of the customers and prospects the perception that there is no
product or service on the market that is quite like yours. In short, a brand offers the
customer a guarantee and then delivers it.

MARKET PENETRATION

Increasing market share of an existing product, or promoting a new product,

through strategies such as bundling, extensive advertising, lower prices or volume
discounts is called market penetration.

It can be justly said that building a powerful brand will in turn help build a
powerful marketing program. However if the customers cannot be convinced that
the product is worthy of purchasing then no amount of money spent on advertising
or brand building is going to help in achieving higher sales.
BRAND BUILDING AND MARKET PENETRATION ACTIVITIES DONE
AT BUSINESS STANDARD:

 Brand awareness program

 Advertising and promotional activities
 Direct selling and mass marketing
 Reactivation of brand
 Corporate scheme

BRAND AWARENESS PROGRAM

“ Brand awareness is the extent to which a brand is recognized by a potential

customer and is correctly associated with a particular product”

The brand awareness about business standard was declining due to factors like
better promotion by competitors or better brand association where a strong parent
brand is publishing a business daily.

Since business standard does not have the advantage of parent brand it has to put in
extra efforts for its brand to be recognized. In respect of building awareness the
following activities were undertaken.
PROMOTIONAL ACTIVITIES

Promotional activities were conducted to target big crowd where a huge number of
readers and aspirers of financial newspaper s could be found.

The newspaper was presented in corporate office, large public spaces etc, bringing
to them the different benefits , values and offers for the customers. Complimentary
copies of the paper were given away during lunch hours so that they could read the
paper and decide if they want to subscribe the newspaper

Education institution has a lot of potential readers for business newspaper. Hence
such institution were targeted where bulk copies of the newspaper could be sold.

The delivery would be at one spot only in this scheme.

Huge discounts were offered at these institutions.

The subscription rates under volume discount scheme was as follows

DURATION COVER PRICE OFFER PRICE SAVINGS

6 MONTHS 611.00 150.00 75.45%

12 MONTHS 1222.00 300.00 75.45%

To get this discount the colleges had to subscribe at least 50 newspapers, as only
then the company can incur the delivery cost at such lower price.
DIRECT SELLING AND MASS MARKETING:

A better alliance with the customer is forged when there is a direct interaction with
the target customers. Direct selling allows us to convince the prospect about the
product in a better way as they can probe us further before purchasing the product.

But direct selling should be aimed at only the target customers since it is a time
consuming task. Going door-door trying to get subscriptions for a business
newspaper would not be as helpful because of the fact that the area covered will be
limited.

Our target customers being corporate, professionals and management students it

was easy to contact them through our promotional activities.

MASS MARKETING was also done along with the promotions where
complimentary copies of the newspaper were distributed along with subscription
details so that the interested customers could contact us.

WEEKLY SUPPLEMENTS

 Smart investor (Every Monday)

 The strategist

WEEKEND

The weekend covers a topic of

 Lifestyle
 Art
 Travel
 Portraits of wealthy people
 Real estate golf
MONTHLY MAGAZINES

 Motoring
 Business standard annuals
 The fund manager
 The billionaires club
 The banking annual
 BS 1000

HUMAN RESOURCES

In business standard newspaper organization they do not do recruitment. The

interview nowadays is carried through video conferencing. As per as the norms the
president and vice president of the organization select the employees.

There are totally 675 employees all over india in business standard organization.
In Bangalore branch there are 35 employees working. There are totally 14 branches
all over the india. The 14 branches handles English editing, and 7 hindi editors.
Printing takes place in Rajaji nagar Bangalore.