SALES EXPERIMENT OF A NEWSPAPER PUBLISHER: "PAY WHAT YOU WANT"

Lukas Bernfried Bruns

doi:10.12955/peb.v2.249

Abstract

Digitalization poses great challenges for companies and especially for newspaper publishers. Due to the large number of digital competitors on the advertising market, media companies are forced to proactively win customers. A major German media company has thus dared to experiment and put the question of pricing for booking newspaper advertising in the hands of its customers. With the so-called "pay what you want" (PWYW) payment model, customers can be won and additional budgets spent. This paper explores the question of whether PWYW is a suitable sales model for newspaper companies and which factors have an influence. The results of the interviews with those involved show solutions, opportunities, problems and that additional turnover can be generated.

Highlights

Introduction and Literature reviewWith its primary products, the newspaper and the advertising journal, the German newspaper industry has been experiencing declining revenues and circulation for more than a decade, and the critical situation in the industry is not expected to improve in the few years either - it may even worsen (Mündges & Lobigs, 2020)
Participants were concerned with generating additional revenue that was not planned for on an annual basis, or receiving additional budget from customers ("I thought it was a fun approach, just thinking, is it a way to increase revenue during this time," Yes, definitely getting additional sales")
The results are consistent with the current state of research, among other things, in that the campaign took place in August, a time of low sales for the product offered ("silly season") and is often used by companies precisely : "Some firms use so-called customer-driven pricing mechanisms to sell excess capacity in times of low demand"(Krämer et al, 2017)

Summary

Introduction

The newspaper and the advertising journal (weekly newspaper), the German newspaper industry has been experiencing declining revenues and circulation for more than a decade, and the critical situation in the industry is not expected to improve in the few years either - it may even worsen (Mündges & Lobigs, 2020). Digitalization is forcing publishers to transform digitally, and yet the weekly and daily newspaper business model is in danger because a reduction in readership and explicitly declining revenues in the advertising market are the rule and not the exception (Daum & Hoppe, 2020). Publishers are in a phase of "trial and error," driven by the danger and changes of digitalization, and in the process, amongst other things, no pattern for solution models has been found throughout Europe (Hummel, 2020)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion