New York Times Case
1. Critical Issues: Define your critical issues and briefly discuss each
How to deal with the company’s lack of clear differentiation compared to its competitors in the highly dynamic market?
How to deal with competitors being in a stronger financial position than the New York Times Company?
How to manage the company’s lack of defined strategic intent? This loophole has persisted for a relatively long period and it has consequently weakened the strategic positioning of the company.
How to put in place clearly defined goals and objectives that can be used to monitor and regulate market competition?
How to face new nontraditional competitors in future, apart from the current market rivals?
How to handle the possibility of new competitors possibly putting in place better strategies and improve capitalization by creating new product offerings that will capture the attention of the market? This may pose great performance risk to the New York Times Company especially if the latter does not devise dynamic approaches.
How to positively influence the Board of Directors to act as a unit when deliberating the serious performance issues affecting the company?
How to put into action long term strategies that should be drafted, amended, adopted and fully implemented so that the company can stabilize itself even in future marketing dynamics?
How to find a worthy replacement for the Senior VP, Vivian Schiller, who had a vast amount of knowledge and was a huge part in the company’s strategic planning, business development, and marketing?
How can the company leverage on the competencies of the new media channels that have been acquired so far? This appears to be a key area of concern bearing in mind that it is not possible to outwit the market rivals without adopting a rigorous marketing strategy through practical media outlets.
2. Competitive/ Business Strategy
A. What is New York Time’s current competitive strategy?
1. How has the New York Times gained Cost Advantage?
The New York Times Company has been able to deliver its products at lower costs than the market rivals by acquiring and merging with some media outlets in order to cut down operational costs while delivering equal benefits to customers.
For instance, it merged with the Tribune Company way back in 2008 with the aim of cost sharing the operating expenses.
The merger also involved Hearst Corporation and the Gannett Company.
This merger has made it a lot easy for the four media