"Reader" Magazine Marketing Strategy Research

Founded in1981, Reader,(formerly known as the Readers’ Digest) a comprehensivedigest magazine was sponsored by Gansu People’s Publishing House. It has gone throughthree major editors, Zhen Yuanxu, Hu Yaquan, Peng Changcheng, who defined the magazinestyle as “truth, goodness and beauty”, and strived to make it into a book comforting thereader’s soul.Reader is born at the end of the “Cultural Revolution”. The Chinese people who hasexperienced a decade-long calamity are curious about the foreign world and eager to know theworld culture. In this situation, the magazine focused on the introduction of western cultures.A few years later, the magazine was acclaimed by the public with its “civilian” style andformed their own brand and became the symbol of Gansu province. With the intensecompetition in the magazine market, the Reader decided to issue the sub-journal. In January2000, it issued the country edition, semimonthly, Reader’s Appreciation, Reader’s original toopen up its market gradually.The year2011is the30thanniversary of the magazine. During the year, the magazineadjusted its marketing strategy taking into account the factors of the society, the customer andthe whole periodical market. Considering the situation that people in modern society wasunder great pressure and kept distance from each other, the magazine reformed to focus on thepeople’ livelihood and social problems and promoted the healthy lifestyle. In face of theappearing of professional journals on the market such as the fashion magazine and the weeklymagazine, the Reader expanded the release of its sub-journals for special consumers such asthe Reader in Uighur,Reader in Braille, a high school essay supplement and Reader for theold age, which formed a group of sub-journals. Meanwhile, with the overheating of digestmagazines and the apprance of new media such as the online reading and mobile reading,the magazine Reader’s Digest in America went bankruptcy. Taking it as a warning, the readerpromoted its official website, on which consumers with the membership could access thelatest news of the magazine, download the e-book and subscribe or purchase the magazine.The official website has become a platform to propaganda itself and communicate with thereaders.With the globalized and mature brand, the Reader began to publish its traditionalChinese version in Taiwan in2011, serving as a platform for cross-strait cultural exchanges. Moreover, facing the saturated domestic market, the Reader began to go abroad and issued thetraditional Chinese version in North America successfully, which not only enhanced thenational brand for Chinese magazinesand made a good preparation for expanding its marketin Southeast,Asia,Europe,Australia and other countries.