Harvard Business Review (HBR) is a magazine published by Harvard Business Publications and includes articles related to management. The magazine is published every two months. The headquarters of the magazines are located in Brighton, Massachusetts. The magazine was launched in 1922 by the Harvard Business School. The journal covers a variety of management topics such as leadership, negotiation, strategy, organizational change, operations, finance, marketing, and others. Various famous management pioneers have published their research findings through HBR, such as Michael E. Porter, Peter F. Drucker, and Gary Hamel. The magazine is published in English and has a circulation of more than 250,000 (AAM, 2012). However, its content is licensed for translation into various other languages (HBR, 2018). The publications are aimed at students and businessmen.
Following are the four dimensions of the Ansoff Matrix for Harvard Business Review:
Market Penetration
The act of selling existing products in existing markets is called market penetration. HBR uses various strategies to achieve this. The first strategy the publishers use is to offer subscription packages for its consumers that provide them with discounts. These packages require consumers to subscribe for a longer duration and pay for the entire duration in advance. These discounts are in large values creating attraction for the subscribers. New subscribers are also offered various forms of discounts. The magazine also offers an online subscription in addition to hard copies. To promote online subscriptions, the publishers offer new readers access to three articles for free before they are required to pay for reading the articles. The publishers have developed strict guidelines for authors and each article goes through a detailed quality check before it is published to ensure quality remains high for any piece of writing appearing in the magazine. The magazine also has strategic relations with various universities to promote the articles printed in the magazine. The magazine prides itself on the quality of the articles in order to dominate competitors. As a result, the magazine has become a brand that is acknowledged in the research world.
Market Development
Market development is the launching of existing products in new markets. The first strategy that HBR uses in this regard is to license various agencies to publish its articles in different languages creating ease for readers and researchers in other nations that cannot understand English. The magazine has also diversified online subscriptions to various nations outside of the United States as a part of its geographical market development plan. The company also includes a diverse range of articles and keeps on adding new management subjects to attract different market segments. A strategy the organization can use is to publish the magazine in nations outside of the United States as well. This will help increase circulation as well. The company can also divide the articles in each issue into various categories and offer a subscription to these categories at cheaper rates to attract specific market segments. Each of these strategies can help increase revenue.
Product Development
An organization promotes new products in new markets when it works on product development. HBR does product development in various ways. It allows authors of new subjects to publish their articles through HBR. This helps increase diversity. Another strategy HBR uses is to offer online services in addition to hard copies of the magazine. This allows readers to access their magazines from anywhere in the world. The magazine also develops new guidelines from time to time to ensure article quality. As a result, the magazine can retain its attractiveness and fame in the world of research. The quality checks of the articles are revised as well to ensure they meet international standards.
Diversification
HBR has excellent diversification opportunities. It can horizontally diversify and start publishing books, periodicals, magazines on other subjects, conference publications, launch its newspaper, and other similar products. It can create its own printing press to print its magazines as a part of its vertical diversification plan. This will increase the hold it has over its supply chain. The magazine can also diversify into unrelated industries such as creating websites, graphic designing, consumer electronics, research centers, and so on. Although these are risky and new for HBR, it holds the potential to gradually expand into these unrelated domains.
References
AAM, 2012. Total Circulation. [Online] Available at: https://archive.is/20170123200306/http://abcas3.auditedmedia.com/ecirc/magtitlesearch.asp [Accessed 15 Jan. 2020].
HBR, 2018. Guidelines for Authors. [Online] Available at: http://hbr.org/guidelines-for-authors-hbr [Accessed 15 Jan. 2020].