Institution Research

Institution Research 

An institution is a company or corporation that sells products in order to make a profit. The product can be anything, but in this case I’m studying magazine institutions.

Total of consumer magazines in the UK is 2,471, and has an estimated value of £1.4billion. Total of business to business magazines in the UK is 4,395, and has an estimated total of £3.2billion. Together will reach revenues of £7billion by 2014.

 Magazine publishing institutions are constantly diversifying by using an array of platforms, eg tablets, mobiles, social media, online, print and live events, in order to satisfy the consumer’s needs in the ways they find the information they desire.

Magazine publishing institutions are also constantly expanding by buying independent magazines. This creates more money for the institution because the independent magazine will be exposed to a larger audience and therefore more copies will be bought by the reader.

Magazine publishing institutions are usually conglomerations of independent magazines being owned by larger publishing firms, which are then owned by some of the largest institutions in the UK. This allows the correct audiences to be reached on a larger scale, and also allows diversification by creating many different media platforms within the different branches of the conglomeration.

IPC Media is the UK’s leading consumer magazine publisher, reaching an audience of 26million UK adults – around two-thirds of women and around 42% of men. It has 25 million users globally each month, and is split into three publishing divisions. 

IPC CONNECT is aimed at an audience of women, providing print and digital media in areas including fashion, lifestyle, celebrity, television and entertainment. IPC CONNECT reaches 9.4million mass market women every month, which is about 49% of all mass market women. It publishes magazines including Teen Now and TV Easy.

IPC INSPIRE is the men's division, with 38 different brands of magazine is a diverse range of genres so that every man can find a magazine that they can enjoy within their range of products. 

The final branch of IPC Media is IPC Southbank. This focuses on the upmarket woman, producing magazines such as Marie Claire and Ideal Home. This division has a readership of over 10 million due to the this market of women being one of the most magazine-buying audiences that there is. 

I think there is a real gap in their market for my product because within their collection of over 60 magazines, there are only two music magazines, and although one of these, Uncut, is focused on rock, and NME focuses on indie rock (with a mixture of other music), Uncut is targeted at an audience who have grown up in the sixties and seventies and features a lot of classic rock, and NME is a lot more mainstream than the niche market that my magazine fits in. So my magazine being a contemporary rock magazine targeted at an audience of around 16-25, I think there is a gap in IPC's range for a magazine such as mine. IPC’s main magazine competitor is Bauer Media, however this institution distributes Kerrang! Magazine and therefore it would be unlikely that it would also distribute a similar magazine like my own.