| Summary: | 碩士 === 銘傳大學 === 傳播管理研究所碩士在職專班 === 94 === The first-ever negative economy growth in Taiwan since 2001 has shrunk the advertising industry enormously, especially for the conventional top three newspaper organizations---United Daily News, China Times, and Liberty Times for their recession volume of advertising transaction. Worse than that, the Apple Daily newspaper has also taken part in the market share since its introduction to Taiwan in May 2003 and consequently, brought about many established newspaper organizations making a great loss in terms of advertising revenue. Based on some practical observations, there is very little profit in selling newspapers at present and the advertising revenue, instead, is expected to have a greater potential to bring in good returns than newspaper circulation. The central issue that facing a press manager in Taiwan now, therefore, is the critical thinking of how to enlarge the advertising revenue for the survival of the newspaper organization in which he/she runs or serves.
For those media advertising agencies, on the other hand, they have paid more attentions continually to the issue of what kind of newspapers are the most suitable press media to be targeting, especially when the advertising market of press media has changed its characteristics from the seller’s market into buyer’s market. In view of the changing trend in advertising industry, this paper aims to set out the model of newspaper advertising service quality based on the needs of media buyer agencies, and makes use of this conceptual model to evaluate the performances of advertising services among major press media organizations in Taiwan.
For the reasons given above, the main purposes of this paper can be stated as two folds: First, constructing the CRITERIA and INDICATORS of advertising service quality of newspaper media from the professional perspectives of Taiwan’s media buyers and advertising agencies. Secondly, we use these criteria and indicators to evaluate the performances of advertising service quality among Taiwan’s major newspaper organizations (i.e. United Daily News, China Times, Liberty Times, and Apple Daily).
For constructing the criteria and indicators, this study conducted the in-depth Interviews with some prominent advertising professionals working on the fields, including the Presidents and Vice-Presidents of major advertising agencies as well as some academic scholars with practical advertising backgrounds. In addition, in terms of the performances evaluations of newspaper advertising service quality, we further conducted the questionnaire survey to collect the appraisal opinions of those who are working on twenty-one advertising agencies with deputy-managers above job title. For this, we sent out 192 questionnaires in total and got 159 ones valid as our final sample for analysis; the response rate is 82.81%.
This research results can be summarized into the following findings:
(1) On the construction of the CRITERIA of advertising service quality, it can be structured into four dimensions including ”Quality of News Coverage”, “Professional Service for Advertising Product”, “Administrative Control of Advertising Product”, and “Advertising Effect”. In addition, these four criteria dimensions can be further detailed into twenty-six indicators for the evaluations of advertising service quality. To begin with, in terms of the professional service for advertising product dimension, these indicators cover from the “accuracy of news“, “depth and breadth of news”, “objectivity of news” to the “social impact of news”. What is more, in terms of the professional service for advertising product dimension, the derived indicators range from the “layout of ad.”, ”comprehensiveness of business news coverage”, “basic information of ad. product”, “media’s professional capability of advertising product”, “media’s service attitude facing ad. customer”, “media’s competitiveness in ad. planning”, “media’s capability of editing ad. copy ”, “media’s capability of marketing ad. product”, to “additive value of ad.” Besides, in terms of the administrative control of advertising product dimension, the indicators include the “price of ad. ”, “flow path of ad. booking”, “collecting and returning of ad. copy”, “reviewing and returning of ad. copy”, “quality of ad. publication”, “sample copy of ad.”, and “level of e-commercialization”. Finally, in terms of the advertising effect dimension, six indicators are listed in the following ways: “viewer rating point”, “volume of circulation”, “ratio of subscription”, “ratio of query”, “media’s capability of integrated marketing communication”, and “media cost CPM”.
(2) On the assessments of the CRITERIA PRIORITIES for the advertising service quality, the “Advertising Effect” is the most important factor influencing advertising agencies’ media buying decisions from the viewpoints of professional advertising managers (the weighted percent is 47.59%), followed by the “Quality of News Coverage” (32.28%), the “Professional Service for Advertising Product ” (12.99%) and the “Administrative Control of Advertising Product” (7.14%).
(3) However, there exist differing appraisals of criteria priorities in advertising service quality across Taiwan’s four main news organizations:
a). China Times: the criteria of advertising service quality, according to its priority, are ”Quality of News Coverage”, “Professional Service for Advertising Product”, “Administrative Control of Advertising Product”, and “Effect of Advertising”.
b). Liberty Times: the criteria, according to its priority, are “Administrative Control of Advertising Product”, “Professional Service for Advertising Product”, “Effect of Advertising” and “Quality of News Coverage ”.
c). United Daily News: the criteria, according to its priority, are “Professional Service for Advertising Product”, “Quality of News Coverage ”, “Administrative Control of Advertising Product”, and “Effect of Advertising”.
d). Apply Daily: the criteria, according to its priority, are “Effect of Advertising”, “Administrative Control of Advertising Product”, “Professional Service for Advertising Product”, and “Quality of News Coverage ”.
(4) Basically, the four newspaper organizations have their own strengths respectively in advertising service quality. Apply Daily strengthens on “Effect of Advertising”, China Times excels at “Quality of News Coverage”, United Daily News is excellence at “Professional Service for Advertising Product”, and Liberty Times is good at “Administrative Control of Advertising Product”.
In summary, the“ Three High One Low” principle, that is, “High rating point in viewing figure”, “High accuracy in news coverage”, “High transparency in newspaper circulation” and “Low cost in CPM”, has become the basic idea for media agencies to allocate their advertising budget. The transparency of newspaper circulation is becoming more and more important and the magnitude of advertising effect is still emphasized continually among media buyers. It will be of great help for the increase of advertising revenue if one newspaper organization can properly utilize the sources of media agencies. In short, one newspaper organization should be standing on its core value of being an objective and fair news press as well as adopting some consumer-oriented strategies to improve the advertising service quality---not only for the increasing of advertising revenue for the moment but the sustainable development in the future.
On the strengths of the analytic conceptual model, quantitative survey results and the qualitative in-depth interviews with advertising professionals, this research, we believe, will be expected as a crucial reference framework for the re-engineering of media organization structures, for the improvement of advertising products, for the formulation of marketing plans as well as for the better interaction between press organizations and advertising agencies.
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