Institutional Research

After researching several distribution companies I have chosen Bauer Media to distribute my regional magazine. Bauer Media Group are a large European-based media company, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany that manages a portfolio of more than 600 magazines, over 400 digital products and 50 radio and TV stations around the world. It’s one of the leading Multinational Magazine publishers in the world and is privately owned. Bauer Verlagsgruppe has been managed by five generations of the Bauer family. Originally a small printing house in Germany, Bauer Media Group entered the UK with the launch of Bella magazine in 1987. Under the name of H Bauer Publishing they became Britain's third largest publisher.


The other distribution companies that I looked at included Archant community Media which are a privately owned media company that creates geographical and specialist interests communities across a wide range of media and employing 1,600 people as part of their team. Currently they are the fifth largest printing publisher in the UK, they publish 1.6 million copies a week and reach 6 million readers online a month. It's portfolio of about 50 titles does feature one of the magazines named Cornwall Life that I will use as inspiration as its based in my target area. Their target audience are people of the C1 social bracket and primarily people who live in the country rather than big cities however they would be part of their secondary target audience.

Another publishing company I looked at was IPC Media Ltd who are a consumer magazine and digital publisher situated in the United Kingdom, with a large portfolio and selling over 350 million copies each year. IPC Media also produces over 60 iconic brands including magazines such as NME, Ideal Home, Country Life, and Housebreaker. In the 1800's IPC had a primary target audience of upper class middle aged men, this was evident as they produced magazines such as; Horse & Hound, Shooting Times, Yachting World, Amateur Gardening. However since the start of the 1900's IPC has started to target woman by producing magazines such as ‘Woman’s Weekly, Woman & Home and Woman’s Own’. In the modern era they continued to expand there target audience with more titles such as: Sporting Gun, Motor Caravan, Wedding & Home, Country Homes & Interiors and so on. From this list of titles its clear that IPC continued to grow and focus on two main target audiences which is middles aged men and middle aged woman.