Case 1- Usa Today: Innovation in an Evolving Industry

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1. What opportunities in the marketing environment did Gannet seize in launching USA Today? How did the company learn about and respond to the opportunities. Answer these same questions for USAToday.com. The opportunities Gannet seized in launching USA Today was that he knew his audience were readers with very short attention spans and a growing hunger for more information. The newspaper’s primary mission was to provide more news to their readers in less time. This was done by writing "in shorter pieces an sprinkled with eye-catching, color photos, graphs and charts." (Ferrell, O., & Hartline, M.,2014.). One of the new things that set apart the newspaper was that it was broken into four sections "News, Money, Life, and Sports" thus allowing the reader to jump into whichever section of their choosing the quickest. Gannet solved the early problems of encouraging advertisers to buy ad space by launching a "Partnership Plan", where advertising companies who purchased 6 months of ads in the paper received another 6 months for free. This allowed the advertisers to test the waters for newspaper ads and with the increase of popularity or the paper, more companies wanted to join. USAToday.com, the on-line version of the printed newspaper, is formatted in the same way the printed edition is with bright colors and snippets of news. It was developed to keep up with the growing technology and in response to the slight decline in profits to the printed version. Also, like the printed version, the on-line version strives to create a partnership with its readers. The reason why I believe USA Today is so successful is it keeps capitalizing its marketing opportunities by listening to their readers. The width of the paper was changed to meet the needs of the business traveler; to make it easier to read on airplanes and to fit easier in a briefcase and USAToday.com

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