Direct Marketing Strategies and Effect on Increasing Readership from Newspaper Inquire on Reviving the Dying Industry Newspaper

Abstract

This study aimed to inquire about the effect of direct marketing strategy on increasing readership in Reviving the Dying Industry Newspaper. In today Sri Lankan newspaper industry facing a very difficult situation because of the decreased readership pattern of the Trio of decades. New technologies and the rise of digital and social media changed the print media sector at the turn of the twenty-first century, bringing many challenges to print newspapers. in this study identified key empirical gaps such as how to revitalize the dying industry, the lack of long-lasting effects of directly concentrating on newspaper marketing campaigns as a strategy. in practically shows the reports newspaper industry worldwide step by step dying because of the total estimated weekday circulation of daily newspapers in the United States fell from 55.8 million in 2000 to 24.2 million in 2020, a steep decline. past surveys show major issues of the future of the newspaper industry, 78% of the readership population is 50 years and above. That key factor shows, that it is going to cause serious trouble for the newspaper industry as this generation passes away. This research is an understanding to find the possibilities of direct marketing as a means of reviving dying the newspaper industry in Sri Lanka, keeping in mind the empirical gap in the long-term effects of direct marketing and a practical gap in implementing cost-effective strategies in direct marketing. Hence, the objectives of this study are to determine which direct marketing approaches increase the readership and keep the readers engaged for the long term while taking into consideration the demographic differences and economic constraints in the industry. Direct marketing strategies were measured in four dimensions: direct selling strategies, direct mail strategies, telemarketing strategies, and SMS marketing strategies. This research study, to achieve its aim, adopted a positivist paradigm motivated by the deductive approach using developed models and theories of explanatory research design. A Google Form questionnaire survey was issued to 366 out of 404 respondents using a non-probability sampling technique to carry out the study. The respondents were those who purchased a locally published newspaper and read it within three months. They were over 15 years old and were in the Sri Lankan newspaper industry. The key findings of the study, under the simple linear regression, revealed that direct selling strategies, direct mail strategies, telemarketing strategies, and SMS marketing strategies have significantly moderate positive relationships in increasing newspaper readership in Dying Industry Newspaper. However, telemarketing strategies show a weak positive relationship with newspaper readership in Sri Lanka's newspaper industry. Based on the findings, it would be necessary for direct marketers to assist Sri Lankan newspaper companies in developing direct marketing strategies according to the demographic stages of their readers regarding the educational level, age, gender, status, and income levels, for increasing readership. The key findings include the practical constraints that limit generalized results concerning sample size and accessibility. Therefore, it should have been possible to identify variables and indicators in the absence of earlier studies on the effect of direct marketing on readership. Future studies might include research on Social and Digital Integration, Email Marketing, and other methodologies like field-level marketing strategies to examine their effectiveness. A longitudinal and mixed-method approach should validate these findings and further complement them with comprehensive insights into the revival of readership behaviors.