Internship Period: 19th April to 20th June 2021

Company Name:

Role of E Commerce and CRM, Survey of Customer perception

and viability of the e- magazines

SUBMITTED BY

Kajal Rai

Roll no: A_24

PRN:20020441113

Under the Guidance of

Faculty Guide Project Mentor

Dr. Ruby Chanda Mr Bhuwan Thapa
Associate Professor Team Leader
SIMS Outlook Group

Page | 1
 DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the project “Role of E Commerce and CRM, Survey of Customer

perception and viability of the e- magazines" has been submitted for a Master of Business

Administration degree from Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies in Pune. It is my

original work, which I completed as part of my project with Outlook Publishing India Pvt Ltd

in New Delhi.

Kajal Rai
PRN: 20020441113
Roll No.: A_24
Major – Minor: Marketing – Finance
Batch: 2020- 2022

Signature:

Place: SIMS, Pune

Date: 18 – 07 – 2021
CERTIFICATE OF COMPANY GUIDE
 Table of Content

Sr No. Title Page no.

1 Execute Summary 5

2 Introduction 7

3 Objective of the Study 10

4 Methodology Used for the study 10

5 Analysis and interpretation 12

6 Conclusion 19

7 Recommendation 20

8 Reference 21

9 Turnitin Report 23
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The purpose behind the report is to understand the problems faced by the outlook and the CRM
strategy. Working with Outlook as part of my two months internship gave me an opportunity to
explore and study the E – commerce and customer relationship management (CRM). During the
internship we learned how publishing group, use customer relationship management tools and
store customer data and also data about the prospect clients and their details like phone number
and other contact information, also help in identifying future sales opportunity, records any issue
or problem faced by the existing customers, and help manage marketing campaigns from a one
point or location.

Over the past one year due to the pandemic caused by the corona virus has cause disruption in
all sectors. This has led to change in business and marketing strategies adopted by companies to
be able to retain existing customer and also be able to find new customer segment. The shift also
had an impact on print media industries and media industry in general. This has also led to
increase in the E commerce platform being used for selling of magazine. Which has led to
change in the strategy shifting the marketing campaign design for digital market selling.

Outlook like many other started their digital version as well that include website that covers the
latest articles and news. Also, outlook took a step further and started their own App which
allowed customers to view the article with more ease on their cell phones.

During our time we conducted a survey to understand the customer perception and the viability
of e-magazines. The idea behind conducting this survey was to understand the behaviour of the
consumers and their perceptions about the e-magazines and if they prefer E magazine over the
print magazine. Survey also concentrated on understanding the buying behaviour of the customer
and also what leads to dissatisfaction of the customer.

A full interpretation and detailed analysis were carried out that showed the Outlook magazine
should focus more on customer retention which can be done by working upon delivery system
and also by making sure of providing extra special offers and gifts to customers and coming up
with special discount offers and provision of auto renewal.
 I learned during my 2 months internship I learned about the customer life cycle and how
outlook looks to promotes their magazines by creating awareness among the potential business
clients in generating sales.
We also learned about the working of tools like Semrush which shows how companies track
their organic and inorganic traffic on the website.
We learned how this data can be used to find out what better can be done so that we can make
better digital campaigns. We learned about the customer retention strategy followed by Outlook
and its competitors.
 INTRODUCTION

About Outlook:

Outlook Magazine was launched in October 1995. Outlook became famous because of its in-
depth analysis of the topics and investigation it carries. Outlook is a name of coming up with
stylish visual format which led to its initial boom. Outlook now has many different magazines that
target different segment but initially when it came out it was a weekly magazine that covers latest
news and galvanised itself from its competitors by bringing in-depth reality. Magazine coved
events that include Kargil war in Kashmir to Cricket news. Magazine also had articles able issues
which where never before discussed like construction of big dams, education and gender and
provided a focus on South Asian geopolitics.

Since its initial launch Outlook has been the fastest growing magazine in India and it has continued
to restructure the Indian news Magazine segment. Outlook has seen exponential raise in its
magazine sales over the years.

Magazine can be best described as bold and vibrant, out of the box and contemporary. Magazine
target audience can be defined as those who are strong personality who are tread setters and want
to read the real news and ideas that can actually make the difference.
 Outlook provides different magazine for different customer base this helps them meet the need of
different customer audience

-- Understanding the working of E-commerce and CRM

-- How CRM enhances sales and marketing returns of

businesses

-- How CRM systems help marketers coordinate and manage marketing

interactions

-- Conducting primary research for understanding customer

perception

-- Viability of the e-magazines which are the digitized versions of magazine

 Types of subscription offered by Outlook:

 In the research conducted by Outlook, points such as segmentation, target audience is identified

so as to define their strategy well and increase their customer base. A well-defined positioning is

necessary to reach the target audience. Following is the research done by Outlook for defining

their target audience.

 Outlook is known for being strongly build and independent magazine which is present over
the entire nation that covers the rural area as well.
 The primary area of business in which outlook India operates are Internet division, the
event division, magazine division and the book division are the four-primary area of
business in which Outlook operates.
 Objective of the Study

-- Understanding the working of E-commerce and CRM

-- How CRM enhances sales and marketing returns of

businesses

-- Conducting primary research for understanding customer

perception

-- Viability of the e-magazines which are the digitized versions of magazine

-- Understanding the customer development life

cycle

Methodology Used for the study:

 The first step of the project involved understanding the business model of Outlook group and how

the magazine industry works by extensive secondary research and scrutinizing the outlook magazine

and reading online feedback by the customers, checking content standards and the different types of

magazines provided by outlook.

 The next step was to understand the customer relationship management of the outlook

magazine and the strategies used by the magazine to retain customers as well as how new

customers are targeted.

 Use of secondary research to understand the competitors: Different types of comparisons

were done to compare outlook with its competitors like India today and Frontline.

o Based on number of readerships

o Price Comparison of magazines

o Types of subscription offered

o Customer life cycle strategy adopted

 Primary research was also done through survey to understand the customer

perception about the magazine: The objective of the survey was:

o To understand the factors influencing their buying decision of the magazine

o Prefer mode of payment

o Factors leading to customer dissatisfaction

o Type of content preferred

o The viability of E- Magazine in today’s world

o Find out the Net promoter score (NPS)

 The sample space taken for the study was 100

 Understanding the customer development life cycle:

o Customer Life cycle is dived into 3 stages
 Acquisition: Here detail analysis of different strategy of
customer acquisition was done
 Retention: Here it was how the existing customers are kept happy by
providing better services
 Customer Development: Here ideas related to customer discovery
and customer validation was considered
 Used software like Semrush and other platforms to understand presence of outlook
magazine digitally
 Also studied how outlook is using ecommerce way to sell the magazine. This was done by
preparing audit report which contains details of organic and inorganic traffic on the website.
 ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION

The Pie graph here shows the number of male and female subscriber of Outlook magazine.

The number of Male subscriber amount to 60% whereas number of female subscriber are

40%.
 This Pie graph shows the age group of the participated people in the survey. Most belong to
the middle age group of 35 to 45 whereas the least are about 55 years load. People selected
for the survey belongs to all age group with almost equal distribution

This pie graph shows how different people came to know about outlook magazine from
different sources. As it can be scene about 41% came to know through friends and relative.
Around 35% through Newspaper and the least being through Hoardings. It can be seen that
Outlook has a good name among its readers as its biggest promoter have through friends and
relative and as a company it’s a great sign.
This Pie chart shows the magazine people like the most among all the outlook magazine. From the
PIE graph we can see that the most popular is the Outlook money which is read by about 34.3%
people followed by 28.3% outlook business and 18.2% and 19.2% Outlook traveller and outlook
Hindi respectively.

The pie talks particularly about Outlook English which is a weekly magazine. We can see
that 77% of people agree that the Outlook English magazine consists of all current affairs.
And only a 23% of people don’t agree on this.
 The Pie chart shows that 89% people agree that each consumer of magazines has its own

psychographic profile or variable in reading the Outlook magazines and about 11% of reader

think that they don’t depend on profile based on psychographic.

This Pie charge tried to find the reason behind the preference of Outlook magazine over
and the reason behind choose the magazine.
We can see that the biggest reason for selecting the magazine is the name Brand name. This
shows that the magazine has built up a good reputation in the magazine segment and people
recognize it.
The second biggest reason was quality of content. Again, this happens because of the good
quality of work done by the journalist and people like the content that outlook puts in its
magazine week after magazine issues.
Here packaging is the lowest this shows that if magazine of high-quality content is being
deliver people are ready to compromise on other parts.
This survey question was asked to know the reason behind people not choosing a particular

magazine. We can see that 44% choose delivery time to be the biggest issue. This is a matter

of great concern and should be looked into. And magazines cover latest issue and late

delivery won’t be appreciated by people. As if the receive a magazine and the headline news

are no more in the spotlight it can lead to great customer dissatisfaction.

This survey tried to find out how much a reader is ready to pay monthly for print

subscription of a magazine. Form the survey it can be seen most people prefer not to pay

more that 200 per month on their magazine. And only about 12% are ready to pay more than

500 per month.

This is a very useful insight we can use while setting the price of the magazine.

From the survey conducted which also aimed to find out the viability of e-magazines, we

can make out that 51% of people are ready to spend Rs 1000 to Rs 3000 for the access to

digital content for a year, which is great news since the whole world is accepting the new

normal where everything is online. We can see that people are ready to pay quite a good

amount for the digital subscription as it is convenient and easy to access.

 The pie suggests that 29% of the people believe that content available and easily accessible

is the factor which influences the choice of format in which they read news and articles.

Then we have the 22% of people who say quality and quantity of the content is an important

factor.

This Pie chart shows that how satisfy the customer are with the magazine. As people will only

recommend the magazine to others if they are themselves satisfy with the magazine.

And we can see that the magazine has a total of 76% people saying that they would

recommend the magazine to other which is a good number overall.

 Conclusion

Outlook Group have made a very good name in the print Media industry and it is among the top
magazine in India. It is known for its high-quality content and audacious journalism which
always brings out the truth. Even though the print media industry has seen decline in recent
time due to people preferring digital options outlook have been able to be consistent in
generating the revenue alongside India today.

Outlook always offer good packages to its existing customers and also provide with gifts which
leads to loyal customers. It also has a very industry standard packages to offer to its clients
which again has help outlook generate higher returns. The CRM system of outlook has been
very good leading to high customer satisfaction.

In terms of its promotion strategy outlook depends highly on sales to generate profits and invest
heavily on prospecting. Outlook can develop other ways to increase their sales.

By doing the server we found that reader prefer magazine that has high quality content and
which are delivered on time. Outlook magazine are known for its high and creative content but
a lot of people said the delivery time is an issue.

Delivery of magazine can be something that the company can work on. Outlook has also started
to work on its e magazine which is a very important step to lure the new generation which
prefer digital content over print media. Outlook also has an App which has a very good
response.

During the pandemic the sales of outlook did not take that big of a troll because that happened
because of their distribution channel. The company has been doing e - commerce which has
help them in selling magazine like before without any issue. To tackle the issue of delivery
during pandemic outlook have collaborated with Bluedart to deliver magazine on time, free of
cost and sanitized magazine.
 Recommendation

 Outlook can work on its on-time delivery of magazine, which will lead to better
customer satisfaction

 In times like these where there is huge competition between the print media
company can spend more money on marketing and promotion

 Compare to its competitor the price of the magazine can be reduced by some amount to
target more customers.

 Outlook has always been known for its audacious content but for diversity outlook can
also work on other area where they can add more content like science and technology

 All the different magazine offered by outlook do not do equally well in the market.
Outlook can try to improve that so that they can generate more revenue

 Currently outlook magazine is available in only two language company can try to
change that and start making magazine in more regional language
 References

 https://www.outlookindia.com/

 https://www.mruc.net/

 https://mruc.net/studies

 https://www.mouthshut.com/product-reviews/Outlook-India-reviews-

925002111#:~:text=Outlook%20group%20use%20deceptive%20selling,g

ift%20%22Liberty%20trolley%20bag%22.

 https://www.indiatoday.in/
TURNITIN REPORT
 Undertaking from SIU Authors before Communicating Manuscripts to any
Journals/Books/Proceedings, etc.
Institute/Department name: Ref. No. _________

I / We, the following author(s)

Sr. Sequence Authors name Affiliation & Email & Mobile

No of authors [Put an asterisk (*) Place
. in if you are the
submitted corresponding
ms author]
1. 1st author Kajal Rai kajal.rai2022@sims.edu
Student, SIMS 9473907446
Note: Put additional rows in case of more number of authors

hereby give an undertaking that the manuscript entitled-Impact of Higher education imparted by Indian Universities on
Pro sustainability orientation of students
to be communicated to the journal/book/proceedings, etc. Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education
has been checked for its Similarity Index for Plagiarism through authentic Turnitin software tool; and that the document
has been prepared by me/us and is my/our original work and free of any plagiarism. It was found that:
1 The Similarity Index (SI) was:
. (Note: SI range: 0 to 10%; if SI is >10%, then authors cannot communicate manuscript; 2%
attachment of SI report is mandatory)
2 The ethical clearance for research work conducted obtained from: Not Applicable
. (Note: Name the consent obtaining body; if ‘not applicable’ then write so)
3 The source of funding for research was: Self
. (Note: Name the funding agency; or write ‘self’ if no funding source is involved)
4 Conflict of interest: No
. (Note: Tick  whichever is applicable)
5 The material (adopted text, tables, figures, graphs, etc.) as has been obtained
. from other sources, has been duly acknowledged in the ms: Yes
(Note: Tick  whichever is applicable)

In case the above-furnished information is found false at any point in time, then the University authorities can take action
as deemed fit against all authors.

Signature & Full Name

of the Corresponding/Lead Author
Date: 19 July 2021 Kajal Rai

Place: Pune
Encl. Similarity Index report -

Endorsement by
Academic Integrity Committee (AIC)