0.9 Financial analyses  (Page 2/5)

• Whether membership in the society is a member’s primary professional affiliation, or a secondary or tertiary membership;
• Member profession (for example, faculty, student, practitioner);
• Member preference for a personal print subscription; and
• Overall perception of the society’s benefits.

To gather this information, a society will often need to supplement membership registration data with data gathered throughmember surveys. For an overview of conducting a membership survey, see Dalton and Dignam (2007), 98-102.

Institutional subscription analysis

It is important to analyze institutional subscription trends in as much historical depth as possible. Over time,institutional price increases can mask the effect of gradual declines in institutional subscriptions. Therefore, a society must carefully monitor thetrend in its institutional subscription units, as well as in revenue. There are few empirical sources on subscription trends for society journals. Anecdotal evidence, and the publicly available studies,suggest that subscriptions to individual titles have been decreasing by about 3- 4% per year. See, for example, Watkinson (1999), which analyses UKjournals.

In addition to historical institutional subscription trends, understanding the complexion of a journal’s institutionalsubscribers by institution type allows a society to:

• Estimate the institutional demand for the online edition . Not all types of institutions will exhibit the same demand for the online edition of a journal. While institutional librariesexhibit considerable demand for online journals, the demand may not be as prevalent for other institution types that may be represented in the journal’ssubscriber base. An understanding of the journal’s subscriber base will help the society estimate the potential uptake of an online edition.
• Establish appropriate prices for an online journal. The value perceived in online and print editions can also differ by institution type. Most libraries accept tiered pricing for onlineservices that take into account the size of the institution’s user base. Detail on a journal’s institutional subscriber base allows a society to develop onlinepricing that aligns with the value the institution perceives in the service (see “Institutional Subscription Pricing,” in Chapter Five).
• Identify under-represented market segments for future marketing efforts . Most small societies have limited and passive sales activities. A detailed profile of a journal’sinstitutional subscriber base might suggest market segments that a society might penetrate more deeply through increased marketing and sales programs. Thepotential of such campaigns will be affected by several variables, including the age of the journal and the nature of the target markets.

Allocated member dues

Some societies only show institutional subscription revenue on their journal financial statements. Other societies determine thecost of fulfilling individual member print subscriptions and explicitly allocate a commensurate portion of individual member dues to the operation of thejournal. Whether it is captured on the journal’s financial statement or not, an explicit understanding of the dues required to provide the member publicationbenefit is of practical importance, as it allows a society to: