In April 2012 a new era in Swiss audience measurement of print media commenced with the start of field work for MACH Basic, the National Readership Survey. WEMF, the jic organisation for industry audience research with a focus on print media and cinema in Switzerland, found it necessary to replace the surveys of the existing MACH Research System with a new generation. The results of the first year were published in September 2013.
As in many other countries, Swiss readership research has beenfaced with changing conditions:
1) A growing proportion of the population has stopped listing their telephone landlines in publicly accessible telephone directories
2) A growing proportion of the population can only be reached by mobile phones (“mobile-onlys”)
3) There is a decreasing willingness of respondents to take part in any type of research activities
4) There is an increase in the differentiation and number of print titles
5) Print media houses have transformed in to media houses with media brands distributing the content via different channels (e.g. e-papers, websites, apps). As a consequence, solutions have had to be developed in order to improve the quality of the random sample with respect to completeness and response rates, as well as the quality of the answers given by the respondents in the interviews. Furthermore, since digital reading is becoming more and more important, it has become necessary to find ways of creating the preconditions for classical readership data to be combined with usage data of digital channels, which provides the option of estimating total audiences of (originally print based) media brands.
Taking all these changes and challenges into account, WEMF enhanced the sample and research design of the new MACH Basic …