Readers' expectations, perceptions, preferences and loyalty towards online newspapers

Abstract

Online newspaper readership is the most popular activity among the fast growing Turkish Internet users population. Competition is high and every newspaper website has to deliver news every day, every second. On the other hand, loyalty of readers is very important since low switching costs make it hard to keep the audience coming back every other day. Not just other newspaper web pages but all other web sites are alternative destinations for web surfers. This competitive environment forces newspapers to better understand their readers. This study aimed to examine demographics of online newspaper readers, their content expectations, and also their awareness levels of and satisfaction levels from online newspapers. Data collected from 639 Internet users were analyzed by using descriptive, factor, correlation, cluster, and regression analyses. The results of analyses show that online newspaper readership is related to satisfaction of readers, familiarity of Internet users with online newspapers, reputation of newspapers, and usability of newspaper web sites. This study showed that Internet users regularly follow online newspapers but they don’t prefer online newspapers over printed newspapers. Data showed that online news readers can be grouped under three groups based on their news type preferences: main-news, fancynews, and topical-news readers. Also there are five factors that are important for readers: credibility & novelty, visuality & design, expertise & uniqueness, recentness & reliability, assortment & popularity factors. Three reader groups have significant differences on their evaluations of five factors.