The Research On Diversified Strategy Of The Dazhong Newspaper Group

Nowadays, the competition of market is growing more and more fierce whether in the domestic or foreign context, and the environment facing with enterprises has been much more complex. In such conditions, the strategic management is of vital importance for enterprises to achieve development and success. Many enterprises are willing to choose or have been chosen the strategy of diversification, while not all the efforts lead to a satisfied outcome. The real question here is whether or not enterprises can formulate a suitable strategy of diversification taking advantage of the current circumstances and benefit for further development.Now we had to admit that the traditional newspaper industry has been going downhill and many presses or newspaper groups have realized the importance of diversification but few of them can successfully draw up a blueprint based on their own situations. Generally speaking, the revolution of diversification strategy in newspaper industry still stays in the primary state, lacking of a successful model. The development of diversification comes with many urgent problems like the definition of the press and the coordinate law and regulations.The Dazhong Newspaper Group, based on the earliest provincial party newspaper- The Dazhong Daily and ranked the third in economic scale of domestic newspaper groups, has formed eight business sectors including traditional newspaper, burgeoning media and cable television, cultural investment, cultural park, building commerce, publish interflow, printing service and conferences and exhibitions service. On one hand, the research of diversification strategy can be universal in some crucial aspects. On the other hand, the Dazhong Newspaper Group is a perfect research sample in consideration of its leading position in the newspaper market of Shandong Province and the strong official support it gained.In recent years, the Dazhong Newspaper Group has been exploring the diversified development mode without a unified schedule or a clear path for further development.This essay is guided by the theories of diversification strategy, referring to advanced practice experience and aimed at studying the diversification strategy of the Dazhong Newspaper Group.This essay took consideration of the current situations of various business branches operated by the Dazhong Newspaper Group and carried out a SWOT analysis, which comes to a conclusion that the Group’s advantages lie in the widespread brand reputation, steady newspaper platform, cultural investment platform, high qualified staff, well-managed financial situation and the ownership of land located in many places in Shandong province which can be used to build cultural industrial parks and there’re many disadvantages as well, like inflexible decision-making mechanism, underdeveloped new media, over-dependence on the traditional newspaper press, obstacles of hiring and promoting talented staff, lack of inspiration and so on. The analysis came up with four possible strategies by cross combinations and one final strategy.This essay also adopted BCG Matrix to analyze the state and orientation of every industry of the Dazhong Newspaper Group and put forward a proposal of promoting the diversification strategy and the business structure, as well as the means and supporting system of diversification strategy.The Dazhong Newspaper Group can apply the diversification strategy by promoting the reorganization and specification of the newspaper industry, developing new media platform, withdrawing from the printing business, selling land and buildings, adjusting logistics service, putting every effort in improving cultural industrial parks, stabilizing the cultural investment platform, looking for valuable investment projects. The supporting system can be described as follow. In the aspect of corporate culture, the Group should encourage staff to innovate and pursue for excellence in a long-term run. As for organization and management, the Group should build up modern corporate institution and optimizing organization structures. And it also should adjust the structure of human resources, reform the motivation mechanism and build up its own brain bank. Moreover, improving financial management is also important.This essay combined research methods and materials of theory and practice and hoped to have reference value to other similar corporates.