Analysing market strategies of commercial broadcasters in a changing environment

Sammanfattning: The digitisation of the media industry has caused a strong decentralisation of logics of the past, towards more open, flexible structures, bringing about both opportunities and challenges. Within the market where Swedish commercial broadcasters operate, 2014 brought about great disruption in video consumption and advertising patterns. The purpose of our research is to identify the current patterns of change in the market, to analyse them with the help of theory and to describe how the defined shaping forces are affecting market strategies of commercial broadcasters. Patterns of change have been identified through the help of a background research across different media industries affected by digitisation, and confirmed by a set of qualitative interviews with industry professional. Afterwards, theory was selected with a context-based approach, to analyse how interactions on three different levels affect market strategies (firm-to-customer, firm-to-firm and society-to-firm level). The resulting framework served as a guide to carry out the main study. Several strategy experts in different fields within the industry where commercial broadcasters operate were interviewed to analyse how market changes are affecting market strategies. According to the results of our main study, new technology and new actors have formed a new emergent market, characterised by increased competition, lowered power of traditional players and undefined boundaries. There is a will to align the currencies of linear and digital advertising offers by means of common measurement standards, but the agreement process is hard and time-consuming. The resulting market is therefore fragmented both in terms of platforms and in terms of audience. With reference to institutions, regulations have become obsolete and hard to enforce, due to decreased geographical boundaries and to the open character of the digital environment. Audiences are moving towards digital platforms disrupting not only viewing but advertising pattens (due to changing audience levels).