These are uneasy times in the print media business. Each day seems to bring more stories of newspapers and magazines paring staffs or shuttering titles. Even before the current economic woes caused ad budgets to freeze solid, marketers were questioning the value of print advertising while committing more and more of their dollars to online outlets.

Desperate for sales, some in the B2B realm have lost patience with any kind of advertising or promotion that doesn’t lead directly to a big order from a new customer. Even as prospects are saying that they don’t want to be subjected to intrusive, one-on-one sales pitches, marketers seem to feel that these direct-selling methods are the only worthwhile approach. Brand-building? Audience-educating? Positioning? What’s that?

The overall impression one might get is that print is headed the way of the dinosaur. Naturally, as editor of a magazine, I hope that’s not the case. I enjoy my job and am a firm believer in the value of marketing research. After being here for 20 years, I’d like to stay for 20 more!

Maybe we’re old-fashioned, but we have always assumed that if we put out a quality product that served our readers’ needs, delivered friendly and helpful customer service and kept trying to improve every single day, we could establish a mutually beneficial, long-term relationship with our audiences.

Not that we are interested in going back to the days when print was king. We’ve taken advantage of all that the Web has to offer, creating our archive of past articles and adding a host of other free resources and functions at quirks.com to help researchers do their jobs. Print-magazine subscribers can always access an online version of current articles. And we offer a fast-reading monthly e-newsletter that allows us to present topical, timely stories that would be outdated in the print magazine.

Growing substantially

We know that things can certainly change in an instant but for now, it appears the love affair between Quirk’s and its readers is still a strong one. Our print-subscription renewal rates and circulation numbers have grown substantially each year. Traffic at our Web site increases every month.

Now, using the word love might seem like overkill but that’s the very term that nearly a dozen people used to describe how they feel about the magazine during my informal chats with readers at the IIR Market Research Event last October.

The positive feelings were also plainly evident as we analyzed the results of a reader survey that we conducted last summer. Readers expressed high levels of overall satisfaction with the magazine, citing research case studies, technique articles and our monthly Research Industry News department as some of the most-read sections.

Readers also reported taking a number of actions based on their exposure to research companies though the magazine, whether from reading about a company in an article, seeing a company directory listing or noticing a display advertisement. Nearly 66 percent said they discussed or referred an article to a co-worker or client; 43.5 percent recommended Quirk’s to a client or co-worker; and 66.7 percent visited an advertiser’s Web site or contacted a company based on an advertisement or directory listing.

Reading the responses to the open-ended question “What do you like most about Quirk’s?” has been a lot of fun. Some of my favorites:

“It’s one of only a few important publications that I read and I have been in the business a long time. Much of what is out there is [expletive deleted]. Quirk’s is good, fills a niche, at least for me.”

“It’s a quick read and practical, not theoretical.”

“It’s fun to read, relevant to current trends and concerns in marketing research, and covers topics often ignored by other marketing publications.”

“I like that I can use Quirk’s as a good reference source for suppliers, techniques, etc.”

“Focused on market research. Across different levels of experience - good pass-along as training information and/or discussion with peers/clients.”

Sometimes contradictory

As I’m sure most of you have experienced in analyzing your own survey data, the responses were sometimes contradictory. For example, about the same number of readers who said they wanted our articles to be more in-depth also said they wanted the articles to be shorter and more concise. Along those lines, we will soon add brief article synopses to the issues, to give time-pressed readers (is there any other kind these days?) a quick way to determine if an article is of interest to them. Starting with this issue, we have also added article ID numbers in the editor’s note accompanying each story to make it easier to find them online.

In terms of dislikes, some respondents said the articles were too basic, some said they were too academic. Interestingly, even though the question was about the magazine in specific, multiple readers made general comments about how they disliked their lack of free time available for reading. Some said that print magazines are “out of step with the times” while others said they like the fact that they can take Quirk’s with them “on the plane.”

One of our main editorial goals has always been to keep readers up to date on trends in marketing research, how techniques are being used and how they can be used more effectively. We will continue doing that, adding more case studies of successful research projects, more staff-written overview-type articles and also covering some of the more basic aspects of marketing research as an ongoing way to help educate those who are new to the field.

“Not too stuffy”

Of all the open-ends, the following response, to the question about what the reader likes about Quirk’s, struck a chord: “Very professional. Not too stuffy. Information I can use. Not too gossipy with industry insiders prevailing. Great personal customer service - I love to talk to the staff when I have a question or concern. Down-to-earth attitude.”

Those sentiments hit home, as they pretty much sum up how all of us here approach our jobs.

To paraphrase a speech I’ve heard pilots make at the end of a many an airline flight, we know you have a lot of choices when it comes to reading about marketing research and we’re happy that you choose to spend some time with us. If you have other comments, concerns or suggestions for how we can improve any aspect of the magazine or Web site, please let us know.