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Digital Transformation at La Presse (A): Crafting a New Digital Strategy - Case Solution

Camille Grange, Sandrine Prom Tep, Sylvain Senecal | Harvard Business Review ( HEC206-PDF-ENG ) | March 01, 2018 (Revision: 2023-09-14)
Abstract:

The newspaper industry is turning around due to the socio-technological changes that affect it. One of the companies in the Canadian newspaper industry, La Presse, is extremely affected by these changes. In its quest to survive, it has to come up with innovations and a new business model. It is looking into ways to design and market its tablet app and new digital product, La Presse+.

Case Questions Answered

  • What changes have occurred in the newspaper publishing industry to where La Presse belongs? (Summarize the changes in terms of both supply and demand.)
  • What path of digital transformation was followed by La Presse? Justify your answer.
  • Would you recommend Crevier adapt the tablet app to mobile phones?

1. What changes have occurred in the newspaper publishing industry to

where La Presse belongs? (Summarize the changes in terms of both supply and demand).

In the 1980s, La Presse implemented desktop publishing software. It revolutionized newspaper production by digitizing much of the process. As a result, the company had complex page layouts, including high-quality texts, images, and graphics that could be created easily.

In 2000, the company developed its digital ecosystem by launching a website. As they were developing the digital operations, they upgraded its presentation and editorial content.

In 2008, La Presse developed and launched the first mobile app. Three years later, it was upgraded and relaunched with a new name and with new sections.

Customers were decreasing their consumption of editorial posts. As a replacement, they started to seek more digital content. For instance, according to the Canadian Newspaper Association, “… the average weekly circulation of daily newspaper declined at an annualized rate of 3.8% between 2011 and 2015, from 35.6 million to 30.4 million.”

Companies that only operate online were increasing in popularity with younger people. Regarding the context of more online and young readers, Social Media played an important role in the diffusion of news.

For instance, platforms such as Facebook and Google account for almost 80% of all external referral traffic to news sites. Furthermore, based on the information in the La Presse case, nearly one-third of Americans searched for information about the news on the Facebook App.

The main source of income in the newspaper industry had been…

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