Yang Gu's Blog

source: http://www.ypg.com/en/

Yellow Pages has more than one hundred years of history. However, this inches-thick compilation of adverts and business directory is becoming obsolete with the the internet and search engines.

The Globe and Mail’s November Issue of Report on Business notes that Canadian publisher Yellow Pages Group’s parent company Yellow Media is facing numerous financial woes.

Strength:

• Yellow is a recognizable brand name: long history, high costumers volume
• strong financial performance: operate at 50% margin, annual revnue of about $1.6 billion for the past few years (1)

Weakness:

• poor reputation among costumers, especially its web service (2)
• failure to integrate technology efficiently: the brand is still associated with a book; its products aren’t very successful on the web
• the company is heavily in debt (3)

Opportunities:

• Unfulfilled consumer need: improve/expand web services. YM is still ahead of many print-based businesses in shifting their revenue-generating sector to the web(4)

Threats:

• search engines and the internet both attribute the consumer’s shift away from the firm’s traditional product
• decreasing investor confidence in the company (5)

Yellow Media is doing well in what it is doing, but unless it updates itself and integerate the role of the internet into its products and competitive advantage, it will fall behind.

References:

(1) Krashinsky, Susan. “Every book has an ending.” The Globe and Mail Report on Business. 28。4 （2011): 35-41. Print.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Ibid.