User View Datapoint Raises Questions, Ire

The Kelsey Group and ConStat recently completed the second wave of our User View research project, in which we ask consumers about a range of issues around the use of local media, including both traditional and digital.

One of the many findings from this research got our attention, and we felt compelled to communicate this information to our clients. We did so in the form of an Advisory issued earlier this week with the intentionally bland title, A Research Advisory: User View II.

Those of you who are TKG clients have already seen the note, and for the rest of the Yellow Pages community, here is the bullet: We asked the question, €œIn the past year, which of the following sources of information have you used or referred to when shopping for products and services in your local area?€ Respondents were given a list of choices that included printed Yellow Pages, newspapers, Internet Yellow Pages, search engines, online shopping sites and direct mail, among other choices.

The results showed a meaningful decline in the number listing printed Yellow Pages from the first wave of User View in October 2003 to the second wave, conducted in February 2005. The decline was from 75 percent to 62 percent listing Yellow Pages among the resources used in the past year to find information on local businesses.

Is this evidence that the business is in a freefall? Of course not. At the very least, it does suggest to us that more research is needed to determine whether printed Yellow Pages is losing some of its stature as a primary resource for information on local businesses, amid a growing list of media choices, including increasingly robust local search.

The Yellow Pages industry can respond to this kind of data in a variety of ways.

It can ask hard questions about the true meaning of the findings. We encourage such questions, and we will engage anyone with standing in this industry in a discussion of the User View research, how it was conducted and how we interpret it.

Another response is to declare the end of Yellow Pages as we know it. This is certainly not the conclusion we have reached. We€™ve said it before and we€™ll say it again, the Yellow Pages has more competition than ever before, but it also retains tremendous power and continues to make a lot of money for its advertisers.

The industry can discourage €œnegative€ thinking about the business. We certainly welcome comments from anyone who takes this view.

Finally, the industry can see the User View datapoint as one of many bits of evidence, some of them apparently contradictory, that as a whole point to the need for an aggressive effort to promote the core directory product while simultaneously preparing vigorously for the inevitable shift in the revenue mix toward one weighted far more heavily toward digital. This shift is already taking place, and we expect it only to accelerate.