Ogden Publishing is a magazine publication dedicated to promoting the green movement and environmental issues. Their target market consists of people who are connected to environmental and rural agricultural issues. Their primary market identifies with an earth-friendly with a conscientious lifestyle. Their products are traditionally a print magazine, but now have a web/e-commerce component to them.
The company uses exploratory research when issues arise, such as a drop in subscriptions. They also use descriptive research through surveys to identify customer needs and wants. Ogden still has a print component to their product offerings. This means that telephone surveys, focus groups, and response cards are still valid ways of analyzing customer needs and wants. Having the Internet is not a requirement of reading their magazine and not all readers may even have access to the Internet, making these survey methods more accurate than web based surveys. In this case, switching to web only surveys would provide inaccurate results, as it only capture one small portion of the market. However, if the magazine were web only and not offered as a print magazine, then any survey other than web would be ineffective.
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Ogden feels that marketing surveys expire after six months and are no longer valid after that time. They use these surveys to predict future sales and to plan resources. Strategic forecasting takes into account longer range trends than the previous six months. Six month customer analyses help to keep the company on top of short term trends, but strategic issues cover a much longer time frame. Short term trends contribute to long tern trends, but there is no need to change the strategic forecasts based on these small hills and valleys. One of the key problems that the publisher faces is putting together the data that they receive from multiple channels in a way that represents the best sample of their target market.
- Pride, W. (2003 ) Foundations of Marketing. Mason, Ohio. Cengage Publishing
