Case Study: USA Today and Hearst Publications In order for a company to consistently excel and become successful long term, it is important for them to use SWOT analysis and PEST analysis. Using these tools allows companies to consistently re-evaluate their current standing and take both preventative and advancing measures to ensure success for the company in coming times. Both USA Today and Hearst Publications are involved in keeping the public updated on current events and trends. USA Today is a well-known newspaper company who dominates print news in the United States. Currently reaching nearly three million readers, USA Today has climbed their way to the top by evaluating and consistently re-evaluating their strategies to maintain and grow their consumer base, which consists of businessmen, professionals, and politicians (About USA Today). One of their greatest strengths is the wide range of their distribution. USA Today distributes newspapers in all fifty of the United States as well as parts of Canada and the United Kingdom (About USA Today). Their content is styled in an easy to read and understand way, making it more desirable to their readership versus other competitors’ newspapers. The company has established a well-recognized design for their newspaper, making it stand out among its competitors. USA Today is a “go-to” choice for consumers who daily read the newspaper. Although, where there are strengths, there are also weaknesses waiting to be turned around.
According to Nicole Fallon of the Business News Daily, a SWOT analysis is an analytical framework that can help any company face its greatest challenges and find its most promising new markets, by identifying the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (2017). It allows for an extensive evaluation of the company’s internal and external resources as well as current and future threats that the company may face. This process can be a great asset in determining and exploring new initiatives, as it helps to identify areas of improvement within the organization while helping with the facilitation and implementation of new business policies. This process is crucial in refreshing the strategies and tactics of any
The SWOT analysis analyses the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, therefore Burt’s Bees can counter a few critical weaknesses that could threaten our ability to build profitability and the market position.
The New York Times has been around since 1851 when former New York Tribune staffers, George Jones and Henry Raymond, founded it. With the onset of “yellow journalism” by competing newspapers causing the newspaper to lose ground, the newspaper was ultimately purchased by Tennessee newspaperman Adolph Ochs in 1896. In 1944, the company began to diversify with the purchase of two New York City radio stations. Following many more acquisitions, in 1992 The New York Times purchased Affiliated Publications, the owner of The Boston Globe.
Even though USA Today is a national newspaper, it is written in shorter piece and sprinkled with eye catching, colorful photos, graphs, and charts designed to address the needs of a sound-byte generation, which are never consider by any other media source and it makes the USA Today’s content refreshing and more engaging than other papers. Because of this the USA Today’s circulation grew rapidly from roughly 350,000 in 1982 to approximately 5.9 million daily print and online readers today. When comparing USA Today with other competitors like the Wall Street Journal, which has 2.12 million subscriptions and the New York Times, which has 1.58 million subscriptions, the USA Today remains the number one print newspaper and USAToday.com, is the internet’s top sites for news and
The case New York Times Co. Vs United States in summary was a first amendment battle between the United States government and the prominent newspaper cooperation New York Times in 1971. The premises of this legal battle was based on the New York Times reporter Daniel Ellsberg publishing in excerpts illegally leaked, classified documents containing the United States involvement in the Vietnam War specifically on the anticipated death counts (Institution, 2015, p. n .p). However, The United States government finding out about leakage placed a prior restraint also known as “government action that prohibits speech or other expression before it can take place” on New York Times cooperation based on National Security grounds (Prior Restraint, 2015). The case, despite the over powering strength of the nation and the accusations against the New York Times Cooperation the case was ruled in favor of the New York Times by the Supreme Court (Curry, Riley, & Battistoni, 2015, p. 458).
A SWOT analysis looks at a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The following is a SWOT analysis of Petco, a well known company that provides the common products that pet owners would need. Taking a deeper look into how they got started, what their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are in the prosperous market place that has a high demand for pet products in today’s culture that are reliable and inexpensive.
Tom and the USA today team faced a new rapidly developing internet information boom. News was not just becoming accessed more by digital sources, but it was being created or changed into digital sources of information. The internet had created, in the context of the news industry, a disruptive outlet to the newspaper production, sales, and distribution. Whole new infrastructures and business strategy focused on web design, rapid information updates, media outlets, and becoming more up to date with the current technological trends in news, information, and communications. With that, Tom realized that the business expand and use its core competencies in content distribution into three formats, which would allow USA today to impact different market segments with one of three particular product/service changes. With the new divisions, the overall strategy would need to become more ambidextrous to guide and coordinate the branches under a single
On its debut in 1982, USA Today was reckoned as America’s first National general-interest daily newspaper. Being the global information juggernaut that he is, Gannett managed to identify a gap in the market that he identified as an opportunity for the leading to-be newspaper of the united States. The opportunity was the void gap in the market. Attention to the business traveler was the least attended to
In order to assess the company and possible future strategies it is necessary to conduct a SWOT analysis and PESTEL analysis.
SWOT Analysis is a simple but useful framework for analyzing your organization's strengths and weaknesses, and the opportunities and threats that the company face. It helps you focus on your strengths, minimize threats, and take the greatest possible advantage of opportunities available to you will giving you the opportunity to ward off possible threats from external sources.
Problem Statement: The advent of internet brought about both challenges and opportunities for the newspaper industry. On one hand, it required redesigning a new product suited for online customers and on the other it was an opportunity to reach to 123 million potential customers in this category. Thus to keep up with the pace of emerging digitization in every field, like all newspapers, New York Times also added online reading in their product portfolio. However it only worsened the crisis the newspaper was already going through. The operating profit declined by more than 76% from 234Mn$ in 2010 to a mere 57Mn$ in 2011. The circulations were steadily declining and the new online advertising could not compensate for print advertising
“SWOT analysis is a method for analyzing a business, its resources and its environment. SWOT is commonly used as part of strategic planning and looks at Internal strengths, Internal weaknesses, Opportunities in the external environment, Threats in the external environment” (Tutor2u.net, 2015). PEST analysis studies 4 dimensions, same as SWOT. The factors measured in PEST are
The New York Times has a strong brand presence, name and equity in the United States. According to Michael Hirschorn, contributing editor at the Atlantic, “You really can trace almost any major story these days to something that originally appeared in The Times. The problem is that once it reaches the public, they may not even know it came from The Times.” Readers of The New York Times are extremely loyal as well. A daily issue is priced at $2.50 compared to $2.00 for the Wall Street Journal and $1.00 for USA Today. In addition, within nine months, 390,000 consumers have subscribed to www.nytimes.com for a premium price of approximately $4.00 a week [Table B] and 70% of print subscribers have taken
A SWOT analysis is an evaluation a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (Armstrong, 2010, p.77). A SWOT analysis is a useful tool in comparing a business, or in this case a character’s, traits to the situation and to other characters.
The Chronicle Gazette is one of today’s leading newspapers in the United States, with a circulation of 225,000 customers. Over the past few years, it has been facing a steady decline in its customer base and revenues. This is mainly due to the increase of people using the internet as their means of gathering news and information. The