Changes in Consumer Behavior

Changing consumer behavior is undeniably one of the most vital themes in this study. The reader has not only moved from print to digital, but has overcome the traditional media companies in many respects. Even a few years ago, a large number of newspaper and magazine shelves continue to decline and are already disappearing in many places. But the same trend partly affects digital media. An electronic newspaper is almost as dead as a paper product. (Pietilä 2016) Understanding this information should be utilized commercially according to time and context. Consumer’s expectations are higher in digital enviroment since there are many options to access the media content. In the news and publishing industry, the power of mass media advertising is steadily declining since the amount of print subscriptions is declining as well. Changing consumer behavior affects straight to media companies by forcing publishers to adapt their publishing content and commercial content to consumers’ ways of consume media. (VKL 2013) Lunden (2009) refers to the interview with Picard 2009, that content creation should be unique on every different platform in order to avoid cannibalizing company’s own products or business models.

Impacts of media convergence require publishers to react and change radically their traditional concept. Since there is an enormous amount of channels, the news and commercial content should always be adapted according to consumer’s expectation of every different channel. (VKL 2013) This demands publishers also to target content at specific customer groups in order to offer a better reach and coverage for advertisers as well (Seisto et al. 2013). Newspapers are not struggling only with concerns of publishing the content through multiple platforms. Consumers will expand their expectations and criteria of new media service. Therefore, the user experience becomes a vital element in new business model. (Argillander & Muikku 2013) In order to stay profitable, media companies should figure out how to enhance overall consumer experience, implement new distribution platforms or extend their revenue models (Berman et al. 2011). The converging impact on newspaper business models is discussed more closely in chapter 3 (Media Industry Through Business Model Mindset), whereas this chapter discusses about concrete changes in consumer behavior.

Digitalization and converging field of media appear obviously in a different way within distinct generations. New ways of consume news is gradually changing routines. Older generation is usually more committed to traditional routines whereas younger generation have ability adopt new routines faster (Reunanen 2016). Traditionally, middle-aged and elderly people characterize typical user base of media. Younger people are often related to social media, internet and technological capabilities and especially the internet has been seen as an incentive for the young people. It is more demanding to make news attractive in the eyes of younger media consumers. The continuous stress about the fact that younger people might disappear around the newspapers and traditional news media and simultaneously the growing impact of the social media forces news organizations consider some improvements to attract younger generations. (Nikunen 2011) Therefore, one of the biggest concerns is that the consumption of news within all generations is shifting to channels that are difficult to charge. In order to improve the sustainability and expand user base in a long term, news organizations should increase the percentage of young consumers. (Snellman 2011)

Furthermore, there has been a clear concern about consumers’ willingness to pay for news content. According to VKL (2013), consumers are about to become more familiar with paying for quality online journalism. They also emphasize the easiness of payments since many media companies have so far struggled with the charging of the online content. This, in addition, should be managed to combine and optimize with the ultimate user experience

according to every platform in order to satisfy users. The user experience is especially important since the news consumption is no more based on the brand loyalty or emotional bonds. Especially younger consumers tend to changes from one digital service to another according to current trends. For example, few social media services have enjoyed relatively short periods of favor since their appearance. In order to publish quality journalism with the unique user experience, media companies should highlight consumer profiles and utilize them with commercial motives. (VKL 2013)

The digital disruption comes out of preferences of consumers’ media usage. Traditionally, the most preferred channel for news has been newspaper or television. This has changed since people seem to prefer web pages of newspaper or the social media. Mobile devices, especially the growth of mobile phones, have seemingly boosted the favor of mobile news.

And the transition to mobile news is most intense among the younger generation. Therefore, online news is the main source for news reading in Finland, but the social media is still relatively unfamiliar news channel in Finland. Nevertheless, the Finnish news reader usually consume both digital and printed version of newspapers. On the one hand, most of newspapers offer their content for free in online and subscribers of printed newspapers browse other newspapers digitally as well. On the other hand, the collateral use of printed and online news is common because most of the newspapers one subscription for both printed newspaper and an access for online news at the same price. (Reunanen 2016) Such a situation regarding to news consumption points out the inevitable need of multichannel approach in Finnish newsrooms.

Since the content published by the different media companies is delivered through multiple channels consumers are always able to choose the preferable channel according to current preferences. This had broken the traditional value chain of media and news industry. Most of the trends arising from the media convergence seem relatively positive from the consumers’ point of view. On the other hand, media business is the most vulnerable party for industry trends. Digital media will offer a wide range of opportunities to access the content through multiple channels. The changing consumer behavior requires plenty of innovative solutions and investments by newspapers in terms of both content production and advertising selling. Although, the industry development enables media companies to reform profitable solutions for both B2C and B2B customers. For the Finnish newspaper industry, it is challenging task to predict the time when advertising markets show positive signs of the recovering from the downturn during the digital transformation. This development strongly depends on the consumer behavior which eventually determine

reasonable target segments of advertisers and thus suitable channels for marketing communication. (Agillander & Muikku 2013) As the growing share of peoples’ wallets divides across the varied internet services and leisure time activities, consumer behavior will be determining the future development of newspaper business since the major traffic happens in online environment. This continuously changing customer behavior highlights the value of the customer data. Therefore, news and media organizations have to be able to measure and refine available customer data into valuable source of information (VKL 2013).