Rethinking the Web: The Web is Killing Off Hard Copy Media. (Or is it?)

As the World Wide Web gained momentum in the late Nineties, many people assumed that it would bring about the demise of traditional “hard copy” media. But, in fact, the opposite is happening:

• “A recent survey of 4,917 people by Belden Associates… showed that while 60 percent of site visitors in four markets read either the daily or Sunday newspaper, only 3 percent said the Web site had prompted them to give up the print newspaper. And 6 percent said they had started a subscription after reading the online version.”
—The New York Times, Aug. 27, 2001

• “Print catalogs—those warhorses of business-to-business marketing communications—haven’t been put out to pasture by the advent of the Internet and other digital media, but at marketing-savvy companies, electronic communications has permanently changed the books’ look and purpose… Some benefits of a print catalog simply cannot be duplicated in a digital format, marketing professionals say. Print catalogs’ greater portability is the most commonly cited advantage… Print catalogs give companies a broader array of colors and fonts from which to choose…print makes seeing the big picture easier than does a series of Web pages.”
—“Net nice, but print is still a better choice,” Chuck Paustian, Marketing News, Aug. 13, 2001

• “You can shop from component catalogs at Web sites and on CD-ROM… Yet surprisingly, most catalog based distributors continue to increase their publication numbers for print catalogs.”
—“Catalog Customers Want It All. Print versions complement Web options.” by Rob Spiegel, Electronic News, Sept. 24, 2001. Spiegel interviews major catalog-based companies who find their customers like the search and interactive capabilities of New-Media catalog formats, yet still appreciate the hand-held convenience of the hard copy catalog. “Even with customers using the CD-ROM and its Web counterpart [these marketers still are] printing an increased number of paper catalogs.”

• Consumers seem to believe and trust the advertising they see in hard copy media more so than what they see on the Internet (e.g. 43% for magazines, vs. 10% for Inter-net)
—Media Choices 2000 Study, excerpted in Public Relations Tactics, June 2001.

• “After a decade in which reading was considered about as hip as the Bee Gees, the under-25 set is now buying books for leisure reading at three times the rate of the overall market. ‘…It’s a backlash against MTV culture,’ says sociologist William Strauss, author of a recent book about the post-Generation-X set. …It wasn’t so long ago that the MP3 generation could scarcely be bothered to crack a book. Colleges saw a 50% drop in literature majors between 1992 and 1997, as Gen-X-ers turned to the Web. But now that so many dot-com fantasies have gone bust, geek chic has had to find new outlets. …The result: Though still small relative to the overall market, the share of books purchased by people under 25 has jumped almost 10% over the past four years, according to market-research firm Ipsos-NPD.”
—“Look Who’s Reading,” Pooja Bhatia, The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 9, 2001.

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