National Publishing Company Case Analysis

National Publishing Company Case Analysis Submitted By Harneet Singh Bahri Roll No-140103066 Section-G

 About the Product Product The product is a market leader in children’s periodical segment. It segment. It is issued fortnightly and has a market share of 45%.It caters to children with age group of 5 to 12 years but it has been seen that the product extends to the age of 14 years .The selling of the product is done as door to door delivery .It has more than 3000 agents and sub agents covering all parts of the state. Also periodical was sold through different shops .These shops also carried different magazines. The price of the product is Rs 10. The periodical is assortment of short stories, long stories, s tories, cartoons, serialized stories, quiz etc. Short stories cater to age groups of 12-14 years They Th ey have a moderate approval ratings averaging 28%. Long stories are serialized in continuous as well as standalone formats. Regular cartoons including 2-3 serialized cartoons had highest approval ratings amongst all segments. Friendly Ghost had 80% preference shares amongst all age.

Product Lifecycle Stage The product is at 3rd stage of maturity .Industry is oversized and weaker competitors have withdrawn from the market. Though it is declining Titli is still the market leader  with a market share of 47% .Hence .Hence ,it is trying to create a stable hold of the market market and hence is at maturity stage. Implications  

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The sales are declining. The company should try to stop tis decline. There is no clarity in differentiation of product. The same product I read by 212 and 13-14 years age group children. There is a resistance by parents to age group13-14 years for reading this magazine. Embarrassment is felt by children in age group of 13-14 years that they are reading Titli The product needs to be differentiated on the basis of age.

Strategy Short Term Plan 

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The company can plan to go online .It could launch its product online and offer its subscription at Rs 5 per copy which is less than the hard copy price. This can generate a lot of interest among children in urban areas as they are exposed to technology. They can reduce the number of pages by excluding topics which have relatively low preference like quiz and read aloud stories .This will help in reducing cost and improving the readership They can join hands with newspaper firm to offer a discount on com bo offer. This would help them increase their sales in the short term

Long Term Strategy 

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The segmentation of the company should be reworked upon. The segmentation should be on the basis of age group i.e. 2-11 and 12-14.The company should come out with 2 magazines catering to the needs of both the segment. The need for 2 magazines is there as Titli a magazine made for children of age group 2-11 is also read by 12-14 and they contribute a good amount of total viewership. The company should try to influence the parents by adding content related to academics and general knowledge.This would help the company to increase the market share.

Learnings

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84 pages of magazine is too large for children’s magazine “Pompatta” is the name of a magazine circulated in Kerala from where this case was taken.20 pages were reduced in the magazine which helped reduce the size as well as the cost of the magazine Line stretching is increasing or decreasing the product variety of an already present product. PLC has two variables namely sales revenue and demand .So, for deciding  which stage it is in we use these 2 variables. In this case for deciding whether the product is in maturing stage or declining stage we need to calculate these 2 variables and check. PLC is generally “s” shaped but here it is slightly different

Number of Periodicals 35 30 25 20 Number of 

15

Periodicals

10 5 0 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

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For solving a case we should have answers to 3 question 1. Should we continue with the product or not 2. Is re-segmentation needed in this case 3. Change the product specific for the age group Here we need to segment the product and divide into 2 age groups i.e 2-11 and 13-14 years respectively .This would help us in catering to different age categories differently. The magazine for children in age category of 13-14  years should have more of science facts and trivia as they have more development than other age groups.