Tech & Biz

Consumers to Newspapers: We like the airlines better

by mtippett | May 19, 2009 at 04:45 pm

220 views | 28 Recommendations | 3 comments

In countless debates with news veterans I am always reminded of how consumers go to newspapers because they trust them and have a relationship with them. Well that relationship is on the rocks these days. In fact, as Jon Fine discovers, consumers are less satisfied with newspapers than they are with the airlines or cell phone companies.

In the first quarter of '09, newspaper customers’ satisfaction rating was 63. To put this in some perspective, those surveyed expressed a greater deal of satisfaction with airlines (airlines!) which scored 64. And cell phone providers (cell phone providers?) which score a 69.

(The most-satisfactory segment, per the survey? Full-service restaurants, which notched an ACSI rating of 84. Comfort food and comfort rituals for uncomfortable times.)

That’s bad enough, but what’s worse is how badly newspapers’ ACSI score has slipped since the surveys began plumbing consumer sentiment. It’s off 12.5% since the survey's debut in 1994.

This marks the steepest “satisfaction” drop of any industry in this quarter's survey.

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Uwe Paschen

at 20:27 on May 19th, 2009

Interesting article. Still many open questions as well.

steffanileman

at 22:16 on May 19th, 2009

Yes, in their efforts to be politically correct all the time, newspapers are making themselves more and more irrelevant as trusted sources of information and the public is turning to alternate sources such as the Internet. Internet will be the end of the newspaper business as we know it.

Iffy (not verified)

at 01:21 on May 20th, 2009

Newspapers are now on the path to obliteration. There is a generation of people (70 plus) who will still look at newspapers on their journey to the grave (though my 80-year-old mother never buys newspapers and always uses the internet), but the youth are lost totally, people under 45 remember the role newspapers had but are now fully in the web world, and the 50-70 group will, I think, become completely dependent on the web for services as they age. Whenever I go back to Canada, and read the dire Toronto Star, or the limp Globe and Mail (or worse still, any remaining local media), or listen to the appalling CBC, I can't take it: the lifeless writing, the hokey chit chat, the lack of courage or fresh thinking: I am like, die already.