SAS wants to understand what the passengers like to read

The frequent and loyal travelers are extremely important for an airline company, and the magazines on board are an important way of communicating for SAS to reach this core target group, says Magnus Lindvall, who is a publishing manager at SAS Media.

In order to look in to the quality of the magazines and get input to editorial development work SAS Media has Zapera doing reader surveys regularly on their magazine portfolio. The portfolio consists of the English-language on board magazine Scanorama, the Norwegian on board magazines SAS Norge-Magasinet and Perspektiv, and Seasons which is sent home to all Gold- and Silver EuroBonus members in Sweden, Denmark and Norway.

It is thus a big advantage that Zapera is good at conducting surveys in multiple languages, Magnus comments.

The respondents are invited in an email where there is a link to the actual survey. Here the readers can see small pictures of the magazine pages so that they can be sure about which parts of the magazine the questions concern.

Since all the surveys are conducted the same way we can easily compare the different magazines and evaluate the results of the surveys, says Magnus.

The survey results are not only used to show the employers that the magazines are being read and appreciated; they are also valuable in the work with selling adverts to the magazines.

The open questions where the respondents can give their own phrasing of their opinion about the magazines are especially interesting for us because they give such a vivid description of how our magazines are perceived by our readers, Magnus Lindvall concludes.

Source: Zapera News, Issue 27, October 2007