Time Inc. Case Analysis

I worked at Time Inc., one of the biggest companies in the magazine industry, for the last two years as a data analyst. Time Inc. owns many of the major brands that people typically purchase such as People, Time, Sports Illustrated, Money, Fortune, and many more. The trends in this industry have led to large declines in print, which I will refer to as newsstand copies, and increased content on the brand’s respective website. I worked specifically for People and Sports Illustrated and our team was tasked with slowing down the declining sales of the newsstand copies.

This industry has been around for a few decades and the major companies had no new ways of differentiating themselves. Every company began to start cutting their overall newsstand
As the author of the article, Jim Riley, suggests, not all companies in an industry operate under the same value chain as they operate under different financial circumstances and were created for different reasons. In this case, Time Inc. is the most profitable company in the industry so they did not have to rush to the restricting decisions the competitors made and they also were able to see how the industry reacted to the declines. (Riley 2012).

Time Inc.’s management, led by CEO Joe Ripp, decided that they would offer a high quality high cost product as the rest of the industry offered the low cost low quality product. As all of the competitors turned towards this lower cost model, they all became seen as a similar product by consumers and therefore were no longer differenced from the rest of the magazines. Ripp and Time Inc. used this situation to their advantage as offering the higher value product would be differentiated and the higher cost may help offset the assumed loss in unit sales. (Riley
is called productions and there they print every brand’s magazine and prepare them for distribution. Time Inc. has production centers all across the nation to shorten the delivery time so that the news that the report is still current, like when a sports team wins a championship game the magazine is out on sale the next day. Management has made changes to the productions department as a result of the new value chain. (Riley 2012).

For example, since they want to offer a higher quality product, they decided to print the copies on higher quality paper. This paper is more expensive, but after conducting survey research Time Inc. learned that the consumer would pay for this more supportive paper. This new paper gives the magazine a “booky” feel as it won’t tear or rip as easily and can be kept for longer periods of time. This was one of the changes that needed to be made in order to offer a higher quality product to the consumers. (Riley