THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY IN CAIRO

SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
MBA PROGRAM

USA Today: Innovation &

Evolution in a troubled industry
More news about more subjects in less time

Kareem A. El Fouly
800-09-1578
1- Life is turning day to day to a faster pace, increasing needs and evolution of demands, to achieve
the objectives, goals and fulfill the missions of any company, the company must be on the same track of
this evolution and fast pace in order to fulfill the needs of the market it is serving. USA Today, a great
example of starting with what consumers need and progressive changes along with their evolution with
its innovative way of addressing customer needs.

The marketing researches that took place for the launch of USA Today, in the 1982s, turned out with
two very important consumer needs, 1) Need for short spans, 2) A growing hunger of information. From
here, USA Today started to focus, providing more news about more subjects in less time, at the same
time the target market of USA Today was a very important and not considered market by other
competition of National News Papers which is the young, well educated who are on the move and care
about current events.

Gannet, and after an in depth research, with his mission for USA Today to make it enlightening and
enjoyable to the public, informative to national leaders and attractive to advertisers, he positioned
the paper’s vision to be “the source of information that would provide more news about more
subjects in less time.” From this mission and to position his vision, USA Today with its differentiation
strategy was truly unique for its TV generation target market with its colorful, easy access and quick
comprehension for its time pressed readers.

Moreover, USA Today with its customer focused strategy and the marketing researches on the go all the
time, starting adapting the paper more to the needs of the readers, with more of detailed sports stories,
focusing on the national news, no foreign staff. However, the main means of the success of the paper
was Listening to the Customer and giving them what they need.

USA today, in the era of being all the time connected and up to date with the news, emails and the
world around, USA Today felt the gap and took actions to fulfill it with its major spin-off USAToday.com
with the up-to-the-moment news along with its same colorful look with more of crisp audio.
USAToday.com features thousands of small stories with the 24 hours updates.

The gap fulfilled with USAtoday.com wasn’t only the news update, but for their target market which
includes the frequent travelers and time pressed professional, USAtoday.com featured four days
weather forecast and travel information available 24/7.

2- USA Today marketing strategy was clear from day one, value added strategy & Differentiation;
the company was eager and progressively working on this track. The products of USA Today were all the
time with different essence for the readers and the users, since the launch of the news paper with the
colorful, easy to read, and small sized stories paper to resizing the paper to be smaller, easier to handle
and easier to read in crowded and tight places along with adding to its portfolio the 1-900 & 1-800 hot
lines for consumer assistance in financial planning, minority business, taxes and other subjects showing
closeness to the consumer and its distribution strategy of the late printing that made an edge in the
lateness of the news than any other news paper. Moreover, the USAtoday.com, with not only focusing
on the news, but with its colorful tabs for each and every section, its mobile applications for the smart
phones keeping its target market always up-to-date.
USA Today, with its all the time improvement and the customer focus is well positioned for the future
with all its brands and products especially with the USAtoday.com. USA Today is targeting the market of
middle management and age and with being their daily news forwarder, it would remain successful but
should consider its continuous improvement and especially its continuous innovations in the news world
as well as the use of its value added strategy and differentiation. The evolution of the news forwarding
techniques and the fast pace of changing of the technology is the key to success of any news provider
and this is believed to be the edge of USA Today.

3- SWOT:

 Strengths:
o Openness to new technologies
o Large number of readers and customers
o Blogs for customers feedback, stories and article
o Social networking
o The number one distributed News Paper in the States
o The multi brands and products for different segments
o Strong position among competitors
 Weaknesses:
o Lack of local news
 Opportunities:
o The fast pace of the change of technology
o Increase in business travelers world wide
o A huge number of readers for the local news papers
 Threats:
o Increase of the cost of printing
o Decrease of hard copy buyers
o Internet news websites
o The Aging of the News Paper readers

USA Today, for a promising future has to transfer the opportunities to strengths, like coping with the
technology change and use of the E-papers, partnership with the key players in the technological
field to find the best output and for USA Today to have a competitive edge, they have to stick with
the value added services, listening to customers and continuous improvements with the same
colorful, easy to use and read news.

Moreover, USA Today, should target the technological market of the youth, these youth would grow
up with the loyalty for USA Today, new products targeting this market segment with
4- From the researches and the assumptions taken in to consideration, the printed news paper is
declining and the reader of this type is aging, it is speculated that the target market for the printed
papers is to decline heavily in the next 10 – 30 years. However, the there is a big market for this news
paper can be penetrated through creating a new product adaptable with the local states it is printed in
which in turn would increase the readers for the ordinary printed papers.

Moreover, from my prospective, the 60% of the Baby boomers would eventually grow old and their life
pace would slow down and at that time reading a printed news paper would be much easier and eye
comforting.