Case Study: Readership Study for a College Magazine

Wondering if the content your organization creates is being read? If readers enjoy it? How long is spent reading it? Topics readers would like to covered more?

Readership market research studies answer these questions and more!

Recently, our team partnered with a higher education institution to understand readership of its college magazine. These types of magazines take a lot of manpower to produce and the results layout a clear direction of what readers want. The results of these types of studies identify next steps for marketing teams. It ensures the content reflects what readers want to read.

Learn more about this higher-ed research project below.

Case Study: Readership Study for a College Magazine

Wondering what could be improved with your content? Market research has the answer.


Objectives

A New York State college partnered with Drive Research on a magazine readership market research study. The objectives of the market research were to provide feedback regarding the content of the Momentum magazine produced by the college. This allowed the client to better tailor the publication to accomplish its goals. The investment in market research provided the college with definitive, measurable, and reliable data points and insights to guide decision-making and next steps to improve readership and maximize the value of the Momentum magazine.


Approach

To address the market research objectives discussed above, Drive Research developed an online survey. The survey addressed annual readership questions to track over time and issue-specific questions that will be updated for each new survey. It is expected the post-issue survey will include new question categories for each new issue (approximately every 6 months).

The survey contained 16 questions and took respondents 4 minutes to complete. Using a third-party market research company to manage the market research ensures honest and unbiased responses. The online surveys are be PC, mobile, and tablet-friendly. A survey test link was sent to the client so the team could view the survey as if they were a participating respondent.

The survey was sent from Drive Research to a list of contacts who received the Momentum magazine by the college. In total 895 responses were collected. The margin of error for this study was +/- 3% at the 95% confidence level, meaning if this survey was conducted 100 times the results would be within 3% of the results given in 95 out of the 100 studies.


Outcomes

The results remain confidential with the college. The results package chosen for the project was question by question exports and an Excel file with the collected data. The results provided also included a additional insight from our team on the findings of the research. Findings included readership frequency, top articles read, percentage of readers who enjoyed reading the magazine, time spent reading the magazine, reasons why the magazine was not read, and topics the audience would like to see more of.

Contact Drive Research, Market Research Company For Higher-Ed

Drive Research is a market research company that specializes in higher education. We work with colleges and universities on various market research needs including surveys and focus groups.

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Market Research Case Studies