SWOT Analysis

_Strengths

-Gap in the market, provides a voice that people are interested in getting involved in. -There is current shift in people purchasing more niche publications over big name ones (Kermond, When niche is nicer) -An original and innovative concept. -Produced as a work of passion so customers feel passionately about the product. It has a constant audience since the ones who read niche magazines are not addressed by other media. When you work in niches, it is more likely to create messages that resonate strongly with the customers and create long lasting trust, fidelity (Brown, Marketing to niche audiences).

_Weaknesses

-Everything is primarily digital within our current climate, which could lead to there being a lack of print sales. -There is no predictability in whether people will purchase the zine -My target audience of generation Z don’t have a huge budget. -Being run by one person can be overwhleming, especially whilst trying to manage an interactive online presence to connect and ensure loyalty with the consumer base.

_Opportunities

-Lockdown lifting which will increase the economy, we are leaving a pandemic that highlighted social issues and made my target audience more socially aware and keen to feed their knowledge. -The potential for more issues of the zine to be published. -Independent book/zine retailers may want to distribute the zine, increasing audience reach. _The past few years of the brutal print versus online wars, there has been an interesting backflip. In the magazine world at least, print has become the new premium form. “In the same way that we all thought vinyl was dead and gone in the music industry and now records are top end … there’s been a renaissance, with many of these magazines becoming art forms.” (Pilby, The niche magazines riding out the gloom).

_Threats

-The current buying climate is unpredictable. -People may not want to submit/collaborate with the zine. _ The first threat that niche magazines could face are the effects of recession and the fact that the market of magazines is in crises (even if statistics show that mainstream magazines suffer of sales losses while niche magazines have an increase in revenue). -Moreover, a lot of other media exists and are very popular, as television but most important of all, the internet. We hear a lot about internet’s immense potential and popularity, and the death of custom printing and the migration of news stories toward tablet computers and other e-readers so we must be careful with this information and be aware that other media can be a threat.