Readership Institute: High Potential Service Areas

When the Impact study surveyed 37,000 consumers across the United States about their local newspapers, it found many ways for newspapers to increase readership. Almost every kind of improvement in service, editorial quality, brand perception and advertising quality has the potential to increase customer satisfaction and readership.

But the real challenge isn't coming up with areas to improve, but in prioritizing improvements to make the most of limited resources. If you can't do everything, how do you decide what's most important?

The Readership Institute decided to prioritize opportunities by their potential to get people to actually read the newspaper more. Where will improvements motivate people to spend more time with the newspaper and read more sections more often? These ratings are called opportunity scores.

Not surprisingly, some opportunities have more potential than others. Overall, service has great potential to improve newspaper readership. Compared to editorial content, brand perception, and advertising content, the opportunity potential for service is the highest of all areas. If we look at the individual items related to service, the condition and completeness of the newspaper has the greatest potential. This list of service factors is by no means exhaustive and the Readership Institute is conducting ongoing research to further explore how to improve customer service.

We found these opportunity scores to be remarkably consistent across U.S. newspapers. Regardless of circulation size or market circumstance, the relative rankings of each opportunity remain the same. This consistency means that any newspaper can implement these changes with confidence that the instructions apply to it.

The opportunity scores themselves have no inherent meaning — they are relative scores used to rank areas. Differences of three to four points in an opportunity score also aren't meaningful. Focus on the overall rank of opportunities and differences of more than five points.

	Opportunity Scores
Service Area	Overall	Men	Women
Condition & completeness of paper	65	87	87
Quality of paper, ink & typesize	59	81	75
When and how the paper is delivered	58	83	71
Accuracy of the bill	56	76	71
Cost of home delivery	55	77	70
Customer service	55	74	70

	Opportunity Scores
Service Area	Overall	Age 18-34	Age 35-54	Age 55+
Condition & completeness of paper	65	61	81	101
Quality of paper, ink & typesize	59	67	77	81
When and how the paper is delivered	58	57	70	93
Accuracy of the bill	56	53	64	96
Cost of home delivery	55	57	66	89
Customer service	55	52	66	88

	Opportunity Scores
Service Area	Overall	Black	Hispanic	White
Condition & completeness of paper	65	75	51	88
Quality of paper, ink & typesize	59	70	66	79
When and how the paper is delivered	58	37	66	79
Accuracy of the bill	56	30	53	77
Cost of home delivery	55	32	62	75
Customer service	55	35	43	76