Advertising principles and practices

Business & Advertising Strategy of Time Inc.'s Pathfinder.com

The site www.pathfinder.com is a Time Inc. site that provides online users and subscribers of Time Inc. products and services access to its roster of magazines. This list of magazines offers a wide array of information about the following general topics or areas of interest: entertainment, business, news, and lifestyle and health. Thus, because of its variety, Time Inc., in general, caters to the general public, which covers all socio-demographic categories, such as differences in sex, age, socio-economic class and sector the people belong to. For example, TeenPeople.com and Time for Kids cater to the youth, while Parenting.com and business- and news-related sites such as TIME, People, Fortune, and Entertainment Weekly aims at the adult market, from ages (at least) 18 and above. Furthermore, Time Inc.'s services extend towards either the business or agricultural sector, as shown in its offering of information via Business 2.0 and Progressive Farmer, respectively.

Time Inc.'s organization is divided according to the four primary areas of interest of the general public: entertainment, business, news, and lifestyle and health. However, these general topics seem to overlap with some of the company's products, such as TIME magazine, which covers news from almost all areas of interest of the reading public in the fields of business, entertainment, lifestyle, and health. However, Time Inc. also offers people with products that specialize on one of the general topics mentioned, such as Southern Living, Cooking Light, Health, and CNN Money, among others. Time Inc.'s use of variety in its services is a strategy that allows the readers to have access to information not only limited to their interest; rather, the company provides information that illustrates what it (company) can offer for the audience, or reading public. Thus, through specificity and variety, Time Inc. products and services becomes larger in scope, catering to all of members of the reading public in the United States and the whole world.

As stated in the previous section, Time Inc.'s purpose is to offer information to the general reading public on all of the areas of interest that it has. These products and services contain information that are of interest and can potentially interest the reading public. As example, a TIME Magazine reader may be enticed to subscribe to Fortune in order to have access to more information that is mainly business-related. Similarly, an entertainment enthusiast may subscribe to either People, Entertainment Weekly, or In Style as well as may interest himself/herself with Cooking Light or Health, magazines that center on lifestyle (general). In terms of geographic locations, Time Inc. also offers people from the South or West of the country thru its magazines, Southern Living and Sunset, respectively. Thus, each site's purpose is to allow the public to have access to specific and varied areas of interest.