Presentation on Summer Project

THE TIMES OF INDIA, Ahmedabad

(BENNETT COLEMAN & CO. LTD)

 
Project Title
ANALYZING THE READERSHIP OF
ENGLISH NEWSPAPER AMONG YOUNGSTERS
IN AHMEDABAD

Organzation Guide: Mr. Subodh Kumar 

Group
Members:
Nihali Dubey
Print Opportunity
 Newspaper Market in Gujarat

Gujarati Newspaper English Newspaper

• Gujarat Samachar • Times of India
• Divya Bhaskar • Indian Express
• Sandesh • DNA
• Sambhav • Business Standard

Times of India is the

Gujarat Samachar is
largest daily
the leading Gujarati circulated English
Newspaper newspaper
 Facts about Ahmedabad
• Ahmedabad the commercial capital has a high standard of living and
literacy and growth rate

Total Population : 5,808,378

Males :3,069,871
Females :2,738,517
Literacy :79.87% overall
Publication Circulation
Gujarat Samachar 211259
Sandesh 135789
The Times of India 72000
Ahmedabad: Major Competitors in
English Newspaper
• DNA

– Promoted by Dainik Bhaskar group

– Worked on aggressive hoarding campaign
– DNA promotes the concept of Value for money spent on the
daily
– DNA money launched to cover financial news

• Business Standard

– It is a financial daily from Business Standard Ltd (BSL)

– It is one of the most sorted newspapers after Economic Times
for financial news
– Its regular weekday supplements, such as The Smart Investor,
The Strategist and Weekend
Indian Express

 Promoted by Goenka Group with a tag line:

Journalism with Courage
It is a newspaper focused on the Indian
economy, stock markets, and fiscal policies
The daily suffers visibility due to poor marketing
strategy

Times of India
It is the highest English daily circular in
Ahmedabad
Published in eight editions across India it
covers events, politics, entertainment and
 About Times of India
 The Times of India (TOI) is a leading English-language daily
newspaper in India with a sale of around 2.6 million
copies .It has an average issue readership of around 7
million
 It is owned and managed by Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd

 The highest circulated English daily in the world

 Published in eight editions from India’s eight ‘powerhouses

of events, politics, entertainment and sports.
Project Description
 Project Description
• Objective
– Analyzing the readership of English newspaper
amongst youngsters in Ahmedabad.

• Scope of Work
– Scope of work included finding various parameters that
would be required to encourage the youngsters in
Ahmedabad for English newspaper readership.

• Deliverables
– Needs and problems faced by youngsters while reading
The Times of India in Ahmedabad.
– Report on English newspaper reading preferences
amongst youngsters of Ahmedabad.
 Methodology
• Formulating Questionnaire
– Reading preferences

• Field Survey

• Inferences based on analysis

– Hypothesis Testing
– Descriptive Statistics

• Recommendations
DATA ANALYSIS
 SAMPLE SIZE

• Target population is the urban part of the Ahmedabad

city
• The sampling method chosen here is quota sampling
• The target statistics here is a proportion
• The population proportion is 0.89 which is the literacy
rate of the target population
• The z value associated with the 95 % confidence level
is z= 1.96
• Therefore the sample size,
• n = 0.89(1 – 0.89) (1.96)2 / (0.05)2 = 150
(approximately)
 SAMPLE DESCRIPTION

• Gender ratio
• Occupation Distribution
• Educational Background
 Detailed Analysis
• Readership of other news papers
• News Paper No. of readers

GujaratSamachar 20
Sandesh 18
ET 11
DNA 08
The Hindu 02
Rajasthan Patrika 04
Indian Express 12
Divya Bhaskar 43
BS 10
AM 22
Others 00
 English Adaptability
100

80

Comfortable
60

40 Not
Comfortable
20

• 93 of the respondents were comfortable

with the English language.
 Reasons for not reading
TOI.
6
0

5
0 P
ric
e
C
omfo
rt
4
0
V
erna
cula
r
3
0 G
ifts
C
omp
etitio
n
2
0
A
vaila
bility
1
0 S
upp
ly

• 57 out of 150 respondents said that it is

the pricing that affects them the most .
• 4 out of 150 said that the supplementary
provided by TOI is not up to the mark.
 Dose recommendation
work?
1
00
9
0
8
0
7
0 DY
6
0 Y
5
0 NS
4
0 N
3
0 DN
2
0
1
0
0

• 50 out of 150 respondents said that they

will definitely read it if experts suggest
that reading English newspapers regularly
improves their command over English .
Is reading TOI a status symbol
for you?
90
80
70 Df.Y
60 Yes
50 Not Sure
40 No
30 Def.N
20
10
0
• 83 said yes that it is a status symbol.
 Hypothesis
• Null Hypothesis H0: Preference
for reading newspaper amongst
youngsters is independent of the
given reasons.
• Alternative Hypothesis Ha:
Preference for reading newspaper
amongst youngsters is not
independent (i.e.dependent) of the
given reasons.
 Contingency Table
Pricing Comfortability with Language Vernacular Free Gifts Competitors Availability Supplements Total
Language

Students 12 17 7 4 7 7 7 61

Parents 27 13 17 15 8 7 2 89

Total 39 30 24 19 15 14 9 150
 Analysis
• The observed value of chi-square
23.43, is greater than the critical
value, 21.03, so the null hypothesis
is rejected.
• Which means that the preference for
reading newspaper among
youngsters is dependent on the
given reasons.
 Recommendation
• The supplements provided by the Company should be more in
numbers i.e. for the whole week.
• They should provide women and children supplements.
• Earlier Ahmedabad Mirror was a supplement with TOI but now
it’s a different product and its price is low, so people have
shifted from TOI to AM. So it may be a threat for TOI in future.
The Company should see to it.
• The students are discouraged as they find the language difficult
so a new column for students like words for the day .
• Some offers on the festive seasons should be offered.
 Observations
• Newspaper is the only product which is sold for less than
its cost.
• There exist a high potential of TOI as 62% of
respondents were comfortable in reading and
comprehending English language.
• Reducing the price of the newspaper looks like an
attractive offer for the customers.
• Language plays an important role to attract the
nonreaders as most of the students were more
comfortable with their language i.e. Gujarati.
• Customers are indifferent towards features such as the
layout of the newspaper, whether the articles are in a
new web-based visuals format.
•The students need encouragement i.e. if their professors
or friends suggest them to read it then only they will read
it.
•While dealing in mass we found that the respondants
gave fake excuses.
•TOI is the first newspaper which introduced the zigzag
pricing.
•The reasons why TOI is the leader amongst English
newspapers are
1) The product itself
2) Vendors’ earnings are less with other newspapers.
•TOI runs various campaigns throughout the India like
Lead India, Teach India,Vote India, Clean Ahmedabad.
 Changes Required
• Consistent distribution of supplements
• Less ads.
• Daily yoga/ exercise tips/ column on health
• More statistics/ graphs charts with business news.
• Simpler language.
• Articles on Science and Discovery.
• Add pages on fashion and beauty.
• Add local grocery/ vegetable rates.
• Add important phone numbers column.
• Reduce indecent pictures.
• Special supplements on special occasions.
 Learning:
• We have applied the knowledge of research design in designing our
research to analyze the preferences and perceptions of readers.
• We have used the knowledge of different questionnaire and form
designs to prepare our questionnaire for the project work.
• We have used the knowledge of different scaling techniques in
making our questionnaire.
• We have applied Chi-square method and data preparation to analyze
the collected data.
• For meetings: Always prepared with a short PPT and summary of work
done.
• Keeping everybody informed makes the work easy to execute.
• Stay patient on field , it enables to maintain the accuracy of study.
• Appointments always help.
• Thorough knowledge about the content (TOI) is necessary while
convincing the people.
 References
• www.enintelligence.com
• www.wikipedia.com
• www.mckinseyquarterly.com
• www.cmocouncil.org
• http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/
• http://ejc.sagepub.com/
• http://etd.lib.ttu.edu
• http://www.dnaindia.com/
• http://books.google.com/books?id=Jzr6mXL8omAC
• www.surveysystem.com/sdesign.htm
• www.statpac.com/surveys/questionnaire-design.htm
• www.indiastat.com