Do Magazines' ”Companion Websites” Cannibalize the Demand for the Print Version?

Abstract

We analyze the extent to which visits to a magazine's companion website affects total circulation, subscription, kiosk sales and foreign sales using Granger causality tests on the basis of monthly data for the German magazine market spanning the period January 1998 to September 2005. We find evidence for positive effects of website visits on magazine subscription but negative effects on magazine kiosk sales. Contrary to the widespread belief that the Internet will cannibalize print media markets, our results do not, however, provide evidence for website visits adversely affecting total circulation.Granger causality; heterogeneous panel data models; Mean Group Estimation; website visits; magazine circulation