Leveraging Brand Equity from Market Place to Market Space

Can established newspapers leverage their offline brand equity to the online edition in order to create visits and page views? This question is key for publishers, as they are now facing a change only comparable to the advent of the printing press in the fifteenth century. In the present study, both a cross-sectional and a time-series analysis are applied to 12 Spanish newspapers. Our findings indicate that brand equity in the market place can be efficiently leveraged into the market space. On-line readership depends both on off-line popularity as on the profile fit between the typical Internet user and the typical off -line reader of the newspaper. The digital market dynamics are uncovered by persistence modeling of visits, page views and brand choice for each newspaper. First, the total number of visits initially evolves, but later stabilizes. In contrast, page views continue to evolve as usage depth increases over time. Finally, brand choice is stable and proportional to the brand equity borrowed from the printed newspaper. Our analysis yields specific recommendations for the three leading newspapers.