Digitalization in the newspaper industry: a business model for the e-newspaper from a customer perspective

The emergence of the Internet era has put pressure on the established business model of the newspaper industry. The e-newspaper will replace the traditional newspaper, but a successful business model is lacking. This paper tries to present a general business model for e-newspapers from a customer perspective. The research consists of a literature review and qualitative research. The qualitative research is based on 29 interviews. An e-newspaper is a newspaper in the form of a webpage or application and can be accessed with various technologies, allowing for fast and reliable searching, and live news coverage. Newspapers are read to search information, get updated news, for leisure reasons, and as a habit. The interviews show that newspapers are also read to socialize and be educated. E-newspapers offer ways to share and communicate about news, and interact directly with the customer. The choice for a newspaper is mostly determined by the perceived ease of use. The future will probably show a central newspaper seller, collecting news from newspapers and bringing it to the customer. News will be delivered for free on the future, since customers do not associate paying for news with higher quality. Advertisement revenues are sufficient for survival.