Abstract
The magazine industry is experiencing rapid proliferation of titles. This creates a challenge for magazine managers who must identify their competition and media planners and advertisers who must identify the appropriate magazines in which to place advertisements. This study introduces a metric based on core customer characteristics that serves as a similarity measure for deriving market structure. The metric has the practical advantage of being formed from syndicated readership data. A taxonomy of 81 magazines is developed that shows patterns of competition within as well as between submarkets. The strengths and weaknesses of this metric and the validity of the taxonomy are discussed.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Arabie, Philip, J. D. Carroll, Wayne S. DeSarbo, and Yoram Wind. 1981. “Overlapping Clustering: A New Method for Product Positioning.”Journal of Marketing Research 18 (August): 310–317.
Baron, Roger B. 1991. “Using the Profile-Distance Method to Select Unmeasured Magazine Prototypes.”Journal of Advertising Research 31 (December/January): 11–18.
Bass, Frank M., Edgar A. Pessemier, and Douglas J. Tigert. 1969. “A Taxonomy of Magazine Readership Applied to the Problem of Marketing Strategy and Media Selection.”Journal of Business 42 (July): 337–363.
Cannon, Hugh. 1985. “Evaluating the Profile-Distance Approach to Media Selection.”Journal of Advertising 14 (March): 4–9.
Cannon, Hugh and Amir Rashid. 1991. “When Do Demographics Help in Media Planning?”Journal of Advertising Research 31 (December/January): 20–26.
Cannon, Hugh and David L. Williams. 1988. “Toward a Hierarchical Taxonomy of Magazine Readership.”Journal of Advertising 17 (March): 15–25.
Crossen, Cynthia. 1988. “Women’s Magazines Alter Covers to Woo More Fans.”Wall Street Journal (May 9): B1.
Fletcher, Alan D. and Thomas A. Bowers. 1979.Fundamentals of Advertising Research. Columbus, OH: Grid.
Foster, David. 1989. “Circulation Management: Entering a New Era.”Folio 18 (July): 115–124.
Hair, Joseph F., Jr., Rolph E. Anderson, Ronald L. Tatham, and William C. Black. 1992.Multivariate Data Analysis. New York: Macmillian.
Holak, Susan L. and Y. Edwin Tang. 1990. “Advertising’s Effect on the Product Evolutionary Cycle.”Journal of Marketing 54 (July): 16–29.
Kobak, James B. 1990. “25 Years of Change.”Folio 19 (March): 82–89.
Lehmann, Donald R. and Russell S. Winer. 1991.Analysis for Marketing Planning. Second Edition. Homewood, IL: Irwin.
McPherson, Miller. 1983. “An Ecology of Affiliation.”American Sociological Review 48 (August): 519–532.
Meeks, Fleming. 1989. “God Is Not Providing.”Forbes (October 30): 151–158.
Milligan, Glenn W. 1980. “An Examination of the Effect of Six Types of Error Perturbation on Fifteen Clustering Algorithms.”Psychometrika 45 (September): 325–342.
Milne, George and Charlotte H. Mason. 1990. “An Ecological Niche Theory Approach to the Measurement of Brand Competition.”Marketing Letters 1 (November): 267–281.
Punj, Girish and David W. Stewart. 1983. “Cluster Analysis in Marketing Research: Review and Suggestions for Application.”Journal of Marketing Research 20 (May): 134–148.
Rentz, Joseph O. and Fred D. Reynolds. 1979. “Magazine Readership Patterns.”Journal of Advertising 8 (June): 22–25.
Sabolik, Mary. 1989. “Print Media Placement Strategies for the New Segmentation.”Public Relations Journal 35 (November): 15–19.
SAS. 1987.SAS/STAT Guide for Personal Computers. Version 6 Edition. Cary, NC: SAS Institute, Inc.
Searle, Warren S. 1983. “The Cubic Clustering Criterion.”SAS Technical Report A-108. Cary, NC: SAS Institute, Inc.
Shocker, Allan D., David W. Stewart, and Anthony J. Zahorik. 1990. “Determining Competitive Structure of Product Markets: Practices, Issues and Suggestions.”Journal of Managerial Issues 11 (Summer): 127–159.
Simmons Market Research Bureau. 1986a.1986 Study of Media and Markets: Duplication of Average Issue Audiences. Volume M4.
Simmons Market Research Bureau. 1986b.1986 Study of Media and Markets: Total Audiences. Volume M1.
Sissors, Jack Z. 1971. “Matching Media with Markets.”Journal of Advertising Research 11 (October): 39–43.
Swanson, Charles E. 1967. “The Frequency Structure of Television and Magazines.”Journal of Advertising Research 7 (June): 8–14.
Venkatesh, Alladi and Clint B. Tankersley. 1979. “Magazine Readership by Female Segments.”Journal of Advertising Research 19 (August): 31–38.
Walsh, Doris. 1990. “Who Will Your Readers Be in the Next Decade?”Folio 19 (January): 84–89.
Winter, Frederick W. 1980. “Match Target Markets to Media Audiences.”Journal of Advertising Research 20 (February): 61–65.
Zuckerman, Laurence. 1988. “From Upstart to Mainstream.”Time (December 12): 72.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
His research interests are in the marketing strategy and public policy areas. His work has been published in theJournal of Marketing, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Marketing Letters, andJournal of Direct Marketing.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Milne, G.R. A magazine taxonomy based on customer overlap. JAMS 22, 170–179 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1177/0092070394222006
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0092070394222006