Street Newspaper ZEBRA. - Who are the readers?

THE CHALLENGE
The South Tyrolean street newspaper zebra. has been around for five years. 10 times a year the sales assistants of the street newspaper sell between 13,000 and 15,000 newspapers. One of the main financial pillars of this initiative are the commercial customers who advertise in the newspaper. In order to provide them with an optimal assessment of the reach and nature of the target group for their advertisement, it is absolutely necessary to know and describe zebra.'s readership better. Who are the people who read zebra., to which social classes, age groups, interest groups do they belong? Does the “typical” zebra. reader exist? What are they interested in? What are the products/services that appeal to this group?

In order to be able to carry out this target group analysis and achieve useful results, a professional survey method was required.

OUTCOMES
The student team developed a scientifically sound questionnaire and conducted a balanced market analysis. Based on the outcomes of these, they identified the key target groups of zebra readers and created different Buyer Personas.

They found out that most zebra. readers are between 50 and 65 years old and the majority are women. More than half of the participants have a university degree, and 90% speak mainly German. The most important areas of interest from all answers of the participants are "Intercultural topics," "Nature & Environment," and "Culture".

From the collected data and from the survey results the desired Buyer Personas could be created. One of them is Maria (50). She regularly buys the newspaper. She has a university degree and works full-time. She buys zebra. once a month, because she wants to support the sales people, but also because she likes the content. She likes to read articles offline and usually gets information from TV or print media.