Preliminary Results on FreePint News Survey 2014
Jinfo Blog

By Robin Neidorf

Abstract

Robin Neidorf analyses initial results from FreePint's research into news needs and preferences. Complete the survey and receive the full results as a thank you.

Item

More than 100 participants have already completed this year's FreePint Survey: News Needs and Preferences. By the time data collection is completed in a couple of weeks, we anticipate tripling that number.

Thank you to all who have participated to date. If you haven't yet completed the survey, please do so now. You'll get a full report of the results, as our thank you.

In the meantime, here's what we're seeing:

Decline in Preference for Factiva

Early results seem to indicate that the upheavals in the market during 2013 have had some real-world impact on the percentage of respondents who say that Factiva is their organisation's primary resource. Last year's final tally had around 60% of respondents calling Factiva their organisation's "preferred product", while just over 50% of the preliminary current pool call Factiva their organisation's "preferred product". 

Gains for "primary product" slot are not dominated by a single alternative provider, however. Percentages naming Nexis and other key products are stable compared with last year.

This is a topic many FreePint customers have asked us about, and we're as interested as they are in seeing what happens as the rest of the data is collected.

At the same time, we see decreases in the percentage of respondents who report they are "very likely" or "somewhat likely" to seek an alternative provider when their contract comes up for renewal. This also reflects the conversations we've had with customers, for whom much of the urgency around evaluating options has died down: they've either made different choices, or at least they no longer feel that they must make a new choice in a short timeframe.

What's the Value?

Over several years of this project, we've asked respondents to rate their agreement with different statements about the value they get and that they perceive in news products. Each statement can be rated with 1 = completely disagree to 4 = completely agree. By comparing agreement ratings over time, we can see that information managers continue to struggle with determining and communicating the practical value of premium news products.

Figure 1: Compares average ratings for the years 2009, 2011, 2013 and the preliminary data for 2014. (Interim years are eliminated to reduce clutter.)

Respondents continue to agree that news is an important component of their content portfolio. But they demonstrate ongoing decline in agreement that the features in premium products add value.

There's a slight uplift in agreement that their premium providers understand their needs, and a slight downturn in agreement that price is the most important factor in purchase decisions.

Significantly, they disagree more than ever that senior management understands the value of news.

Again, it's important to keep in mind that this is preliminary data that may well shift by the time the project is complete. However, it does aggregate the responses of over 100 information managers, so it does tell us something of trends.

Participate Now

The survey remains open through the end of October 2014. If your organisation purchases at least one premium (paid for) product for news content, you are eligible to participate. 

Your participation is fully anonymous, but if you provide an email address at the end, you will receive a copy of the full results, to thank you for your participation.

Participate now

This Blog item is part of the FreePint Topic Series: News, and Beyond.

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