Impact of Smartphone News Apps on Print Media - A Twin TAM Framework

Abstract

News magazine being an important part of the print Media industry has so far been affected by World Wide Web and currently by the Smartphone Apps. They have just entered the industry with great promises and potential. Research focusing on the impact of news apps on the news magazines will provide an opportunity to understand how readers look at both technology and decide on using them. The study used a survey method by questionnaire distributed by both direct and online mode. A conceptual model with Twin TAM framework was proposed for the study as the research requires considering two technologies simultaneously. Usefulness and Ease of Use of both technologies has an influence on attitude towards News Apps and Print Media respectively. Positive attitude towards print media creates more dissonance in presence of Attitude towards News Apps. Apparently, if the attitude is positive then the dissonance will be more in case of print magazine. Also, reverse is the case of news apps. Finally, dissonance is found to reduce the intention to use News Apps. The study provides implication to print media industry based on previous cases. Technology has transformed the print media industry. Be it the journey starting from the printing press to news websites, and currently the revolutionary news apps, it is the dynamism of the technology that has continuously evolved suiting the current needs of the present tech-savvy generation. Technology has become the part of our daily life. Knowingly or unknowingly, we are leveraging the advantages of the technology everywhere and everyplace. The fact remains that all the three mediums discussed previously exist by supplementing and posing challenges to each other simultaneously. The news media organizations have struck a balance in all the three mediums. Each medium is rich in content and unique in its own way. Resulting in wider reach of customers and increasing the popularity among people. Newspaper was considered the main source of information for fairly a large population of the country for of its characteristics of being concise and portability. As other forms of media came quite later and hence enjoyed complete freedom in its operations. Meanwhile, Magazine came into picture and gave the print media an all together new avatar by creating a different market for itself. Now, people have a substitute, and have weighed it as an important source of information. However, due to the advent of technology these two mediums had to keep up with the ever-changing market. Since, then it has come a long way and undergone numerous changes to meet the changing demand of the consumers. Before the advent of apps, the print media industry had a limited scope. The news media solely relied on the printed form. Nobody imagined the consumption of news and information other than newspapers or magazines. The invention of the World Wide Web (WWW) in the year 1991 gave the print media a digital form. Computers became widely popular and a necessity for the working population. Currently the digital media is leading the whole industry. The rest is history. The year 2008 has witnessed the emergence of the term- app- which is a short form of the term application software has exploded the demand for Smartphone, tablet computers and other mobile devices in the market. Now we have apps for almost everything ranging from news, games, cooking, driving, etc. You name it and it has it. The explosion in number and variety of apps, due to the user requirements, has paved the way in the creation of a wide-range of review, recommendation, blogs, etc. in magazines. News apps have revolutionized the way we look at the print media industry now. It has added one more dimension to it by expanding its horizon from different length and breadth thereby creating many opportunities to a rather unexplored but potential area mainly related to the magazine publication. In this case, as both these mediums single-handedly created their own market in the presence of other mediums still existing and competing with each other, has created a direct relationship to study comprehensively the two broad mediums of media format i.e. news apps and print magazines. News apps not only provide immediate information but also constantly updated news items thereby providing a better medium for information exchange among its users as compared to conventional media like newspaper or magazine. Simultaneously, print magazine provides a more wide coverage of concrete data or news and also used as reference material in many cases. Therefore, a fine comparison between both the mediums was an apt study to check the latest trends in the media industry. In addition, a lot of research had been