Mondadori, how to survive in the e-book era

Abstract

Mondadori is the Italian market leader in the publishing industry, with a history of more than 100 years of experience in the field. The company headquartered in Milan, is the biggest book and magazine publisher in Italy and the third largest in the consumer magazine category in France. The book category currently accounts for almost 25% of the annual revenues and since the year 2010, the company started focusing also on the digital contents for books. The case study offers an overview of the market from both a global and a local perspective, with the focus on the Italian situation, where the main topics addressed are the competitive landscape, the digital growth and the digital piracy. This industry analysis is needed to show the environment where the company is working and to make understand possible threats and opportunities, like for example the new regulations on e-books arising through the new Italian government. The following chapters deal with an overview of the company, with a specific analysis on the strategic choices in the e-book market in the past, present and future. The purpose of the case is to provide the reader sufficient information to evaluate the three strategic alternatives offered and therefore he or she should be able to formulate a complete reasoning behind each of the three options. The first one is focused on reducing the price on e-book as a way to engage further the readers and the reader should be able to understand if such an option could be profitable for Mondadori or not; after that the suggestion is to think about an innovative way to exploit social media to reach out to new readers and to forecast future trends, especially in terms of authors. The last option presented, deals with the new trend of subscription models and the question is whether such a model, which worked successfully for the music ad film industries, can be valuable for publishing companies.

Date of Award	2015
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	João Simão Pires (Supervisor)