Term Paper

OF

Marketing Management

Topic : Ajit Newspaper

Submitted To: Submitted By:

Mr. Parveen Singh Kalsi Gagandeep Singh

(Faculty dept. of management) R315-A23

MBA- 1st Sem.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I feel immense pleasure to give the credit of my term paper

not only to one individual as this work is integrated effort of

all those who concerned with it. I want to owe my thanks to

all those individuals who guided me to move on the track.

This report entitled MARKETING PLAN for ‘AJIT’ NEWSPAPER

I sincerely express my gratitude and lot of thanks to Mr.

Parveen Singh Kalsi for helping me in completing my

Term paper and give me a ideas for doing my job and

making it a great success.

I would like to express my deep sense of gratitude to staff

of LOVELY SCHOOL OF BUSINESS who introduced me

to the subject and under whose guidance I am able to

complete my project

PREFACE

As MBA degree require equal attention practical as well

as theoretical aspect of the business, various problems

are to be dealt with in these courses, that is why

research programs are there to give deep as well as

through knowledge of the subjects.

I have attempted to live up these requisites while

preparing this term paper. It is a part of professional

courses. With the help of term paper we can able to

understand the deep knowledge about the specific

topics assign to us.

During my project work I observed some the aspects of

making a market plan. and gathered all the necessary

information regarding it.

It is hoped that this report meets the given expectations and various requirements of the research

AN INTRODUCTION TO

‘AJIT’ NEWSPAPERThe most favourite newspaper of the punjabi’s ‘AJIT’ is the world’s largest newspaper that is printed in Punjabi language. The newspaper is called as ‘PUNJAB DI AWAAZ’.

Now I am going to discuss the brief history of the ‘AJIT’ newspaper. It was first printed at Lahore, in Urdu language in 1941. then it was only of 4 pages and was printed only weekly. After that it started printed daily in 1942 and was conducted by the civil supply minister of that time S. Baldev Singh. The first chief editor of the AJIT newspaper was the MLA of that time S. Lal Singh Kamla Akali.

After the independence, It was started printed at Jalandhar and S.Sadhu Singh Hamdard was its chief editor.In 1955 it was started printed in Punjabi language as ‘AJIT PATRIKA’. After that it was again changed to Punjabi ‘AJIT’ in 1957. This newspaper had a great

success. After that Most of the punjabi’s started reading this newspaper regularly.

After the huge success in Punjabi newspaper the AJIT group comes in to action again with the launch of the Hindi newspaper called ‘AJIT SAMACHAR’ in 1996. So in this way they started giving competition to their competitors in the segment of Hindi newspaper.

They took their first step in the world of internet in July, 2002 by launching their website of Punjabi news www.ajitjalandhar.com. From this website the readers can read their news in Punjabi language very easily and effectively.

Because of these efforts by the AJIT group the AJIT newspaper becomes the No.1 selling Punjabi newspaper in the world.

An introduction to a Marketing Plan of a Newspaper

More than in most other businesses, the need for good planning in the newspaper business is essential.

Newspapers are subject to major economic cycles. They have a high level of variable costs. They benefit from short-term initiatives. The newspaper industry is highly competitive, and threats are changing all the time. They are uniquely dependent on inter-related revenue streams provided by sales and advertising. And newspaper companies are fast moving.

"Good planning is the route to accelerated growth," says this report, which offers a examination of the main techniques that newspaper companies use in their planning processes. "It is the means by which market difficulties and internal blockages can be anticipated. It is the way to forecast resource requirements such as staffing technology and newsprint. It is also the best way to encourage teams of managers to work together."

Making an Effective Marketing Plan

How well your advertisements and promotions draw customers will ultimately determine how effective your marketing strategy is. It becomes your responsibility to cultivate your designated market, if you decide to market your invention yourself. One of the ways to do this is through advertising and promotions. Remember the aim of the advertising and promotional strategy is to create awareness of your product, to arouse customers' needs and expectations to the point of consumption and to create a loyal stream of satisfied customers who continue to patronize your business.

A marketing plan aims to help organise the strategy for a company, its products or services. Planning is essential in all organisations and company plans should be documented.

A marketing plan is not a unique document within an organisation. Production would have a Production Plan, Human Resources a Human Resources plan and so on.

 .

However, all good plans must support the overall corporate objectives of the organisation, the corporate objectives maybe to be global leader in the next five years, all individual plans must support this.

A common method used to help plan a marketing plan is an acronym called AOSTC. It simply stands for

1. Analysis – Of environment.2. Objectives – Setting yourself SMART objectives.3. Strategies – For segmentation and growth, targeting and positioning.4. Tactics – Used i.e. marketing mix5. Control. – How you will monitor that you are achieving objectives.

CURRENT MARKET :-

As we all know in India a lot of newspaper are publishing in different languages. Altough ‘AJIT’ daily newspaper is having share in overall market share, but still more than 20 lakh readers daily read newspaper and ‘AJIT’, a newspaper from AJIT group is having a large no. of readers daily. , it is still a leader in punjabi newspaper in the market. And have the pruod of becoming the No.1 selling Punjabi newspaper in the world.

MARKET DEMOGRAPHICS

Market demographics means the demographic factors which influence the market of Ajit newspaper which are as follows:

Age-The is Ajit newspaper having the readers of every age because it is printed in Punjabi as well as in Hindi language, both of the languages are the mostly used by the Indians as Hindi is our national language and Punjabi is also very popular language

Occupation- In this factor, we can talk about the occupation of the readers of Ajit newspaper which are professionals, students, and even every little and older member of an Indian family.

Generation-The existing generation is having great interest in knowing what is happening in the state and country and how the markets are performing. so this demographic factor is influencing the marketing strategies of Ajit newspaper.

your marketing plan should include strategies typical of any marketing plan. The plan should especially include what marketers dub as the four P's of Marketing:

PRODUCT PRICE

PLACE

PROMOTION

Review your plan. Make certain it contains the strategies listed below and on the next page and then determine how these strategies will be applied by you. Include a brief explanation for each strategy.

Identifying Competition:

By market research data By demand for product

By your nearest direct and indirect competitors

By the strengths and weaknesses of competitors

By an assessment of how competitors businesses are doing

By a description of the unique features of your product

By the similarities and dissimilarities between your product and competitor's

By a pricing strategy for and comparison of yours and the competition's

Identify the five nearest direct competitors and the indirect competitors. Start a file on each identifying their weaknesses and strengths. Keep files on their advertising and promotional materials and their pricing strategies. Review these files periodically determining when and how often they advertise, sponsor promotions and offer sales.

Ajit group becomes successful in identifying their competitors and become able to be no.1 selling Punjabi newspaper in the world. And they also become successful in their Hindi language segment ‘Ajit Samachar’. They are giving hard competition to their competitors like ‘Punjab kesari’ , ‘Denik Bhaskar’ etc.

Develop A Marketing Budget

Operating an effective marketing plan requires money, so you will have to allocate funds from your operating budget to cover advertising, promotional and all other costs associated with marketing. Develop a marketing budget based on the cost for the media you will use, and the cost for collecting research data and monitoring shifts in the marketplace. Ajit group has make a good use of their marketing budget that is why they became successful in every new segment like ‘Ajit Samachar’, ‘Ranjit Weekly’ .

COMPARATIVE PROFILE

The most commonly a person always compare price of the newspaper to the other newspaper. The Ajit newspaper is the no.1 selling Punjabi newspaper because of their lower prices in comparison with their competitors the price of the Ajit newspaper is only Rs.2 in their regular weekdays, while the Sunday edition is of Rs.3 only. While other newspapers like The Economic Times and The Financial Express price their Saturday and Sunday editions at Rs.7 to Rs.10,. Other Business newspapers like Mint and Business Standard don't Publish on Sundays. If your product is sold at the lowest price regarding all your competitors, you are practicing competitive pricing. Sometimes, competitive pricing is essential. For instance, when the products are basically the same, this strategy will usually succeed.

- Like, ‘Ajit newspaper’ is having competition with the ‘Jag Bani’ which is an another Punjabi news paper who is giving competition to the Ajit newspaper. So the Ajit group used the competitive pricing strategy to give hard competition to his competitor. They sell their newspaper to their customer at comparatively lowest price to increase their sales and they became very much successful in their strategy and become the ‘world’s No.1 selling Punjabi newspaper’.

STRATEGIC ADVANTAGES OF AJIT NEWSPAPER OVER OTHER NEWSPAPERS

‘AJIT DAILY NEWSPAPER’ which is used in daily routine by the customers is having following strategic advantages:

-Competitive pricing strategy:

If your product is sold at the lowest price regarding all your competitors, you are practicing competitive pricing. Sometimes, competitive pricing is essential. For instance, when the products are basically the same, this strategy will usually succeed.

- Like, ‘Ajit newspaper’ is having competition with the ‘Jag Bani’ which is an another Punjabi news paper who is giving competition to the Ajit newspaper. So the Ajit group used the competitive pricing strategy to give hard competition to his competitor. They sell their newspaper to their customer at comparatively lowest price to increase their sales and they became very much successful in their strategy and become the ‘world’s No.1 selling Punjabi newspaper’.

-Remember that the success of competitive pricing strategy depends on achieving high volume and low costs. If your prices are lower than your costs, you are

going straight to bankruptcy! To avoid such a mistake, you have to take notice of the break even ratio that you will find below. So Ajit newspaper group make themselves able to cut their cost by achieving high volumes. In this way they managed to make good use of ‘Competitive Pricing Strategy’

-Cost-plus-profit Strategy:

It means that you add the profit you need to your cost. It is also called cost-orientated strategy. The authority may have access to the costing data and should like to check if the profit added to the cost is not too high. That means the company should check that he profit added to the cost should not be very high.

-The ‘Ajit newspaper’ reduced their profit added to the cost and they managed their cost of production very well for this they read the cost reducing techniques used by the other competitors in the market like ‘Jaj Bani’ and ‘Punjab kesari’. After this they make themselves able to manage their cost in comparison to their competitors. so they used this strategy of Cost-Plus-Profit very well to make themselves the market leader in the industry of the Punjabi newspaper and became No.1 in selling Punjabi newspaper all over the world.

Value Strategy: It means that you base your prices on the value you deliver to customers. For example, when a new technology has a very large success, you can charge high prices to the customer. This practice is also called skimming. It is easy when you are in the introductory phase of the product life cycle.

Ajit newspaper group uses this strategy very efficiently in their different segment called ‘Ajit Weekly’.

Ajit Weekly was conceptualized with a view to disseminate quality reporting to the Punjabis across the globe. Their success in bringing the Punjabis at home in the world has enabled them to publish the Ajit Weekly in the major metros of North America.

They have started thier mission of providing quality reporting to Europe by bringing out “RANJIT WEEKLY (Euro Edition)” from thier base in the UK. They will always endeavor to provide the up to date news, views, information.Here is a glimpse of people behind the mission called Ajit Weekly: Bringing Punjabis At Home In The World.

So they used this strategy very well by launching a new segment for the Punjabi’s living all over the world and they charged little more for the service they have provided to their customer and increased their profit and also they set their brand image by doing this.

3 C’S i.e CUSTOMER, COMPETITORS AND COST THAT AFFECTS THE STRATEGIC ADVANTAGES:

1. CUTOMERS: The customers are those who pay the price for a product or service. They are therefore, focal point. It is extremely short-sighted to select a strategy without first identifying those people whom the strategy supposed to affect. Of course, the identification of such market components is not a new step in market planning.

Ajit daily newspaper uses this strategy very well by targeting the customers of Punjab who usually read only Punjabi language. So they launched a Punjabi news paper called ‘AJIT’ ‘AWAAZ PUNJAB DI’ for the Punjabi customers. They also launched a new segment for the punjabi’s living out side the country i.e abroad by launching ‘AJIT WEEKLY’ in north America. So they always take care of the Punjabi customers and launch all their products or services according to their preffrences.Then they also consider the Hindi language and launched a new segment for the Hindi readers ‘ Ajit Samachar’. So in this way they are taking care of every aspect of their customers.

2. COMPETITORS: The importance of pricing in relation to competition, makes it mandatory for the market planner to know exactly what competitors are charging. It is not that easy to get such competitive pricing information as it is usually a closely guarded secret. Though it is easier to get price lists of competitors, the

challenging task is that of actual pricing policy. Most sellers establish excellent rapport with a few customers. These customers find it useful to provide selected manufacturers with information about the prices quoted by the competitors. It is also easy to get information by comparative shopping. This information involves the observation of prices actually charged by the competitors.

‘Ajit newspaper’ is having competition with the ‘Jag Bani’ which is an another Punjabi news paper who is giving competition to the Ajit newspaper. So the Ajit group used the competitive pricing to give hard competition to his competitor. They sell their newspaper to their customer at comparatively lowest price to increase their sales and they became very much successful in their strategy and become the ‘world’s No.1 selling Punjabi newspaper’

3.cost: The cost to be incurred may be fixed or variable. Fixed cost are those that do not vary in the with the changes in the sale. These are depreciations, rent, interest and other general and administrative expenses. Although these costs do not vary in total, they do decline per unit as the sales expand.

-Ajit group has expended their sales very much that they became able to manage their cost of production. They increase their sales by launching a newspaper in Hindi

language ‘AJIT SAMACHAR’ .they also increase their sales by launching a new segment in north America called ‘AJIT WEEKLY’. In this way they increased their sales and reduced their cot per unit.

MARKET STRATAGIES

DEFINATION- It is a process of dividing the market according to similarities that exist among the various subgroups within the market. The similarities may be common characteristics or common needs and desires. Market segmentation comes about as a result of the observation that all potential users of a product are not alike, and that the same general appeal will not interest all prospects. Therefore, it becomes essential to develop different marketing tactics based on the differences among potential users in order to effectively cover the entire market for a particular product.

For knowing the market stratagies of business line we should know the STP profile of business line.

S-Segmentation

T-Targeting

P-Positioning

Bases for Segmentation in Consumer Markets-

Consumer markets can be segmented on the following customer characteristics.

Geographic Segmentation

Region: by continent, country, state, or even neighborhood

Size of metropolitan area: segmented according to size of population

Population density: often classified as urban, suburban, or rural

Climate: according to weather patterns common to certain geographic regions

Ajit daily newspaper uses this strategy very well by targeting the customers of Punjab who usually read only Punjabi language. So they launched a Punjabi news paper called ‘AJIT’ ‘AWAAZ PUNJAB DI’ for the Punjabi customers.

They also launched a new segment for the punjabi’s living out side the country i.e abroad by launching ‘AJIT WEEKLY’ in north America. So they always take care of the Punjabi customers and launch all their products or services according to their preffrences.Then they also consider the Hindi language and launched a new segment for the Hindi readers ‘ Ajit Samachar’. So in this way they are taking care of every geographical aspect of their customers.

Demographic Segmentation - Some demographic segmentation variables include:

Age: The is Ajit newspaper having the readers of every age because it is printed in Punjabi as well as in Hindi language, both of the languages are the mostly used by the Indians as Hindi is our national language and Punjabi is also very popular language

Occupation- In this factor, we can talk about the occupation of the readers of Ajit newspaper which are professionals, students, and even every little and older member of an Indian family.

Generation-The existing generation is having great interest in knowing what is happening in the state and country and how the markets are performing. so this demographic factor is influencing the marketing strategies of Ajit newspaper.

Psychographic Segmentation- Psychographic segmentation groups customers according to their lifestyle. Activities, interests, and opinions (AIO) surveys are one tool for measuring lifestyle. Some psychographic variables include:

Activities

Interests

Opinions

Attitudes

Values

Behavioralistic Segmentation-

Behavioral segmentation is based on actual customer behavior toward products. Some behavioralistic variables include:

Benefits sought Usage rate

Brand loyalty

User status: potential, first-time, regular, etc.

Ajit newspaper group uses this segmentation very efficiently in their different segment called ‘Ajit Weekly’.

Ajit Weekly was conceptualized with a view to disseminate quality reporting to the Punjabis across the globe. Their success in bringing the Punjabis at home in the world has enabled them to publish the Ajit Weekly in the major metros

of North America.

They have started thier mission of providing quality reporting to Europe by bringing out “RANJIT WEEKLY (Euro Edition)” from thier base in the UK. They will always endeavor to provide the up to date news, views, information & entertainment.

TARGET MARKETING-

Target Marketing is a process of breaking a market into segments and then concentrating your marketing efforts on one or a few key segments. Target marketing provides a focus to all of your marketing activities. It involves group of persons for whom a firm creates and maintains a product mix that specifically fits the needs and preferences of that group. A marketer may choose to target the entire market with the generalized product, promotion, distribution, and pricing strategy meant to appeal to everyone, or may go after one segment of the market with a customized strategy or several segments of the market with more than one strategy.

Ajit daily newspaper uses this strategy very well by targeting the customers of Punjab who usually read only Punjabi language. So they launched a Punjabi news paper called ‘AJIT’ ‘AWAAZ PUNJAB DI’ for the Punjabi customers. They also launched a new segment for the punjabi’s living out side the country i.e abroad by launching ‘AJIT WEEKLY’ in north America. So they always take care of the Punjabi customers and launch all their products or services according to their preffrences.Then

they also consider the Hindi language and launched a new segment for the Hindi readers ‘ Ajit Samachar’. So in this way they are taking care of every aspect of their customers.

POSITIONING-

Positioning refers to the customer's perceptions of the place a product or brand occupies in a market segment. In some markets, a position is achieved by associating the benefits of a brand with the needs or life style of the segments. More often, positioning involves the differentiation of the company's offering from the competition by making or implying a comparison in terms of specific attributes.

The ajit newspaper positioned themselves very well in the market ‘Ajit newspaper’ is having competition with the ‘Jag Bani’ which is an another Punjabi news paper who is giving competition to the Ajit newspaper. So the Ajit group used the competitive pricing strategy to give hard competition to his competitor. They sell their newspaper to their customer at comparatively lowest price to increase their sales and they became very much successful in their strategy and become the ‘world’s No.1 selling Punjabi newspaper’.

The ‘Ajit newspaper’ reduced their profit added to the cost and they managed their cost of production very well for this they read the cost reducing techniques used by the other competitors in the market like ‘Jaj Bani’ and ‘Punjab kesari’. After this they make themselves able to manage their cost in comparison to their competitors. Ajit newspaper group uses this strategy very efficiently in their different segment called ‘Ajit Weekly’.

Ajit Weekly was conceptualized with a view to disseminate quality reporting to the Punjabis across the globe. Their success in bringing the Punjabis at home in the world has enabled them to publish the Ajit Weekly in the major metros of North America.

They have started thier mission of providing quality reporting to Europe by bringing out “RANJIT WEEKLY (Euro Edition)” from thier base in the UK. They will always endeavor to provide the up to date news, views, information. so they become successful in positioning themselves in a better way in the market.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. www.ajitjalandhar.com 2. Reference from the book marketing management by

C.N.Sontakki.3. Reference from the book marketing management by

Kotller.4. www.peerspectives.org 5. www.businessplans.org 6. www.ideasformarketing.com