Recent economic uncertainties have caused the price elasticities of many newspapers to collapse. Standardized price increases at the product level are no longer effective. State of the art is data-driven cohorting leading to a dynamic price strategy.
Not having tackled this yet is most likely due to a mixture of “force of habit”, traditional advertising standards such as IVW or HOI (ÖAK and WEMF, on the other hand, are much more contemporary), an underlying fear of a possible unpleasant customer reaction, and the lack of knowledge of best practices and how to ideally approach this project.
As a long-time consultant to the leading pricing consultants in our industry in the U.S. (Mather Economics) and Interim Head of Business Intelligence at the Kölner Stadtanzeiger, I was able to build on my theoretical and practical experience. Thanks to the leadership of Carsten Groß, the Kölner Stadtanzeiger can pride itself to be the first regional newspaper in Germany having introduced dynamic subscription prices for new as well as existing readers.
The future undoubtedly promises a differentiation of subscription prices – also in terms of margin optimization, such as delivery costs in the print business. There is a lot of potential in the ePaper business as well.