China's Magazine Publishing Industry

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Some foreign magazines have, in co-operation with their Chinese partners, run their Chinese editions for several years, and many of them have shown their advantages in the market. Their performance has shown that there can be successful business models for foreign magazine publishers in China.

According to China Concept Consulting’s survey, magazines with foreign involvement are more satisfied than local magazines with their performance in China in terms of management, editorial content, content resources, marketing and promotion, advertisement sales, distribution, talent retention, government relations and financing. Measuring 9 different categories, magazines with foreign involvement all have average scores of above 0 (“neutral”) for their level of satisfaction[1], while magazines without foreign involvement have scores of above 0 in only four categories. The findings of the survey are shown below:

 FIGURE 3-13:  Performance profile of magazines with foreign involvement    

 
Source: China Concept Consulting

However, China Concept’s survey of the magazine market also revealed that there was a gap between perceived advantages and actual market performance of magazines with foreign involvement. This section of the survey asked magazine executives (of both foreign-invested and domestic magazines) about the perceived strengths of foreign-invested magazines and, for the foreign-invested magazine executives, also about the situation for their own magazine.  When aggregated, the answers showed a clear gap between perceptions and reality. For example, magazines with foreign involvement perceived to have advantages in marketing actually were not satisfied with their performance in this aspect, as shown below. Government relations is perceived to be the weakest link for magazines with foreign involvement, but in reality the degree of satisfaction with this is close to “somewhat high”.

[1] Satisfaction degree measured on a scale of five points: -2 (low), -1 (somewhat low), 0 (neutral), 1 (somewhat high), and 2 (high).