According to a recent report titled “Publishers Need Multichannel Subscription Models,” released by Forrester Research and written by Sarah Rotman Epps, 80 percent of consumers say they wouldn’t bother with newspaper or magazine content online if they had to pay for it.
This finding it particularly interesting in light of recent comments made by Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp., who seems intent on putting up a pay wall for its online content and appears willing to block search engines from its content.
Epps is well aware of this trend of newspaper organizations considering subscription models to shore up their broken business models. “A recent report from the American Press Institute underscores this trend: The API reports that 60% of newspaper executives say they’re considering paid content options, even though currently 90% don’t charge for any content online,” she notes in a blog post.
If Forrester’s findings are right, this won’t go over well with the general online-news-reading public.
When posed the question, “If the Web sites for the newspapers and magazines you read were no longer free, how would you prefer to pay for that content?” 80 percent of the 4,711 U.S. consumers surveyed said they “wouldn’t access them if I had to pay.”
Just 8 percent would subscribe to access all online content, while another 8 percent would subscribe to a plan that includes print, Web and mobile device access and 3 percent would be willing to make individual payments for each article they read.
Epps notes two conclusions:
“1. Publishers should continue to offer free, ad-supported products to the 80% of consumers who won't pay for content online; and
2. Publishers should offer consumers a choice of multichannel subscriptions, single-channel subscriptions, and micropayments for premium product access.”
However, she warns, “one size won’t fit all – consumers want choice.” When posed the question, “If the publications you read were no longer available in print, how would you prefer to access that content?” Forrester found that responses were spread across multiple channels.
Thirty-seven percent said they would like to access content through a Web site, while 14 percent said they’d prefer to access content by way of mobile phones, 11 percent said laptops and netbooks, 3 percent said eReaders (such as Amazon’s Kindle) and 10 percent said they’d prefer PDF via e-mail.
Forty-four percent responded with “None of these.”
The report also notes that demographics fail to offer a clean-cut way of targeting who will and won’t pay for online news content.
Epps’ bottom line is that “There's no one delivery platform, and no one pricing model, that will satisfy all consumers.”
Sources:
http://blogs.forrester.com/consumer_product_strategy/2009/11/new-forrester-report-consumers-weigh-in-on-paying-for-content.html
http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,53822,00.html
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/11/16/80-of-consumers-would-not-pay-for-content
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/11/09/murdoch-on-blocking-search-engines-i-think-we-will
Digg 
