Workshop on Media Interactivity, Neuchatel, Switzerland, 30.10.2009

1. International Workshop
Media Interactivity: Economic and Managerial Issues
Neuchatel, Switzerland, 30.10.2009
Interactive media and new
customer roles among magazine
and newspaper industries
Miia Kosonen
Hanna-Kaisa Ellonen

2. Background of the study
”If you have reasoned opinions, share them here…
and if you don’t, please go to discuss on other
website than ours”
⇒Contradiction between the nature of social-
media types of interaction and the ideal of ”good
content”
⇒Any other types of contradictions/tensions
related to interaction by media consumers?
Where do they emerge from?

3. Background of the study
• Interactivity as a constitutive feature of the Internet and
social media
• Increased opportunities of customers
– to participate in idea generation, designing and testing
products
– to share information with other customers
• The challenge of managing tensions in media
organizations
– the existence of ”seemingly opposite but
simultaneously occurring demands”, involving both
competition and complementarity (Achtenhagen &
Raviola, 2007)
– tensions may trigger or inhibit change

4. Research questions
• Prior studies focusing on
– what are the types of interactive features
• e.g. categorizations, listing social-media types of services
– how journalists perceive interactive media and how the Internet
affects journalism
• Less attention has been given to the new roles of customers
– both sides of the coin must be explored in order to understand
interactive media
• How publishing companies perceive the new roles of customers?
• Which kind of tensions does customer interaction through Internet-
based channels provoke?

5. Methodology
• Qualitative study drawing on semi-structured interviews
• Companies demonstrating systematic and on-going
effort in developing their online offerings
• Two newspapers and three magazines, 31 interviews
altogether
– Four informant groups: managers, chief editors,
editors, online service developers
• Inductive analysis, three rounds of analysis
– Coding the data thematically
– Identifying recurrent themes, grouping them and
forming upper-level categories
– Comparing between groups of informants

6. Results: new customer roles
• Agents - spontaneous feedback, tips, opinions
• Dialoguers – on-going dialogue and feedback
• Debaters – customer-to-customer opinion exchange
• Messengers – spreading content in social media
• Testers - panels and pilot groups, concrete use of the product
• Content-producers – directly adding content to publishing
company’s online services
• Customers engage in value-creation processes and support the
company’s objectives
• Yet harnessing their full potential requires internal changes – how to
manage the tensions related to new customer roles?

7. Results: new customer roles
Direction Roles Examples
Customer-to-business Agents
Testers
Sending photos or videos
Testing online service features,
evaluating content
Customer-to-business and
Business-to-customer
Dialoguers
Content-producers
Commenting news and
specifying their content
Adding information to databases
Customer-to-customer Debaters
Messengers
Content-producers
Exchanging opinions
Linking to interesting articles
Adding information to databases,
sharing experiences with other
customers, giving ratings

8. Results: the related tensions
Tension Which new customer roles provoke the
tension
1. The traditional role of editors vs. the new
role as a facilitator of customer interaction
Dialoguers
Debaters
2. The existing organizational structures vs.
demand for new structures, responsibilities,
processes, and technology
All
3. Being closed vs. being open to the voice
of customers
All
4. Active vs. inactive customers Debaters
Messengers
Content-producers
5. The expected quality vs. the nature of
customer interaction
Dialoguers
Debaters
6. Customer loyalty vs. customers’
fragmented use of interactive media
Messengers

9. Challenges related to managing tensions
• In managerial terms, the tensions raise challenges
related to
– The amount of interaction
– The quality of interaction
– The attitude towards interaction

10. Challenges related to managing tensions
company-
external
(customers)
company-
internal
amount of
interaction
quality of
interaction
attitude towards
interaction
Tension 4 
Inability to harness
customer networks
Tension 1 
Inactive
participation
Tension 2 
Inappropriate
organizing
Tension 3 
Losing control over
readers
Tension 5 
Inability to understand
the nature of customer-
driven interactions
Tension 6 
Ignorance by
customers

11. Conclusions
• The study contributes by
– identifying and categorizing six new customer roles
– unraveling the tensions arisen by new roles of
customers
• Managerially, the key issue is being aware of the
tensions and being able to use them to catalyst change
• In further research, capturing the perceptions of
customers themselves
• Also linking the identified customer roles with different
types of interactive services

12. Thank you!
Miia Kosonen (Dr.Sc., Econ.) and
Hanna-Kaisa Ellonen (Dr.Sc., Econ.)
Lappeenranta University of Technology
P.O.Box 20, 53851 Lappeenranta, Finland
miia.kosonen@lut.fi