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eader research we conducted recently accomplished two things. It
confirmed my hunch that Site Selection
remains the most authoritative publication in its niche. And it provided
clues about how to keep it that way going forward. It yielded many
other benefits, as well, but these are the points I want to stress
here.
To the first point, we asked readers which publications
they turn to first for insights into the dynamics at work in their
industry. Respondents had to write in the names of those publications
— no choices were provided. By far, Site Selection
ranked No. 1 with 35.7 percent saying so, followed by The
Wall Street Journal (24.6 percent) and Business
Week (6.8 percent). Similarly, we asked readers which publications
they turn to first for insights into how to better execute their job
responsibilities — again, respondents had to write in their answers
as no selections were offered. Site Selection was at the top of the
list for 28 percent of respondents, followed by The
Wall Street Journal (18.6 percent) and Harvard
Business Review (5.7 percent).
In both cases, these rankings were true of both
the entire universe of respondents and our primary constituency —
the corporate real estate manager or executive whose duties include
that function.
Of interest to our advertisers and future advertisers,
the survey revealed that 68 percent of respondents pass their issue
of Site Selection on to other people in
their organization. Some indicated that more than six others read
their issue of the magazine. That means the print ads in reality are
viewed by far more than our audited circulation of 44,000 readers.
We asked readers about which parts of Site
Selection they value most, and our state and regional spotlight
reports ranked first for the universe of respondents and for the corporate
executives who read the magazine. The industry spotlights came in
second for these same sets of respondents. We’ve been writing these
types of articles for a long time, but we still relish the challenge
to find the key dynamics at work in a state or industry that would
influence capital investment decisions. More importantly, these articles
are written from the corporate investor’s perspective, not the economic
developer’s. To me, that fact alone is behind the magazine’s strong
performance in the rankings I cited earlier.
To the second point, we asked readers about which
industries they would like to see written about more frequently. At
the top of the respondent universe’s list — and that of corporate
real estate managers — is logistics, distribution and transportation.
This more than stands to reason, given the role these functions now
play in the global movement of goods unleashed in recent years by
e-commerce. As this issue of Site Selection
illustrates in multiple places — such as the cover story on global
infrastructure and the logistics feature (on p. 591) — the role of
the real estate asset manager is taking on some important new characteristics,
and they have some very real, bottom-line implications. We look forward
to unraveling them in the issues ahead and to remaining your key publication
source of such insights.
Till next time,
