Unlock document.
This document is partially blurred.
Unlock all pages and 1 million more documents.
Get Access
Kiki
magazine is a quarterly publication established in the fall of 2007 for tween girls. With approximately
10 million females between the ages of 10 and 14 in the United States, the founders saw an opportunity to
capture a niche market of girls who wanted a magazine that looked like the glossy newsstand magazines
geared to older girls but featured design-based content, rather than pop-culture based content.
Magazines, newspapers, and books are the three major forms of print media in the publishing industry. In
2007, the publishing market had a market value of $157.9 billion, with magazines representing 9.4 percent
of the total. There were approximately 6,800 consumer magazines and 12,725 business magazines
produced in the United States. Magazines generate income via advertising and circulation revenue, with
advertising accounting for an average of about 55 percent of revenue. Circulation revenue is derived from
both subscriptions and single copy sales. The top 300 magazines in 2006 generated $34.4 billion in
revenue. Of this revenue, the 10 largest consumer titles had combined circulation and advertising
revenues of $7.7 billion.
There are approximately 250 magazines in the United States targeted exclusively to children (8 years and
younger), youth (9 to 12 years), and teens (13 to 19 years).
Kiki
competes in the youth and early teen
segment of the magazine marketplace, which has a magazine readership of about 48 percent of the
segment. There are three major types of magazines in this age range: sexualized girls' magazines, kids/fun
magazines for both boys and girls, and educational magazines for girls.
There were two major magazines in the sexualized girls category--
CosmoGirl!
with 1.5 million in
circulation and
Teen Vogue
with a circulation of almost 1 million. Content in both magazines includes
fashion, celebrity interviews and gossip, dating/relationship advice, and beauty tips. Advertising is
comprised largely of ads for perfume, makeup, and clothing. Despite its high circulation,
however,
CosmoGirl!
printed its final issue in December of 2008.
Popular titles in the kids/fun product segment are:
Highlights for Children
,
Nickelodeon Magazine
,
and
National Geographic Kids
. All three magazines contain games, cartoons, and very short
articles.
Highlights for Children
does not contain advertising, though both
Nickelodeon
Magazine
and
National Geographic Kids
do.
Nickelodeon Magazine
printed its final issue in 2009.
Two prominent girls' magazines in the educational product segment are
American Girl
and
New
Moon
.
American Girl
, with a circulation of around 700,000 does not contain any advertising and
encourages girls to be creative.
New Moon
, with a tagline of "The Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams,"
attempts to empower females as they transition from girls to women. In existence for 15 years, the
magazine has a circulation of 30,000. There are two girls' magazines that fall between the sexualized and
educational content segments.
Discovery Girls
, with a circulation of approximately 186,000, and
Girl's
Life
, with a circulation of 367,000, focus on school, growing up, beauty, fashion, and self-esteem. Both
have content related to dating and relationships.
Kiki
is a quarterly magazine and interactive "creativity" journal targeted to the 9- to 14-year-old female
market segment.
Kiki
is designed to appeal to girls with style and substance and follows the fashion design
curriculum used in colleges as its springboard to topics such as finance, geography, entrepreneurship,
history, and fine arts. Its goal is to demonstrate that having fun with style and artistry is compatible with
intelligence and creativity. The driving philosophy behind the magazine is the promotion of self-
confidence among young girls. Currently,
Kiki
does not accept advertisements. The
Kiki
team has an
overall discomfort with exposing young girls to commercialism and is concerned that outside influences
might force
Kiki
to compromise on its philosophy.
Kiki
has a goal of showing a profit in year five, with a
circulation of 30,000 magazines.
QUESTION
The
Kiki
magazine case deals with analyzing marketing opportunities. You have been hired
