A Lloyd-mechanizmus. Krízis és árpolitika a lapkiadásban (1860-as és 1870-es évek)
The Lloyd-Mechanism. Crisis and Pricing Strategies in Newspaper Publishing in the 1860s and 1870s

Summary/Abstract: The study explores business strategies and decision-making mechanisms shaping the pricing policies of market-based daily papers in response to crisis. The history of publishing from a corporate angle has not previously been studied by Hungarian researchers, so the media-economic approach in this study is unprecedented. The analysis is based on two market-based factors of newspaper publishing at the time, which are referred to as information trends and economic trends in this study. While the former had an impact on demand, the latter determined advertising budgets. Based on the analysis of business performance of Pester Lloyd, a German-language daily published in Pest, the author points out that the paper was a profitable enterprise in the 1860s and 1870s and it was an important medium both for the advertisement market and for the readers. Before the financial crisis of 1873, advertisement sales made up for nearly half of all revenues for several years. Following this, the study looks beyond the façade of performance indicators and examines the publisher’s responses to the dramatic changes taking place in the publishing industry, as well as the steps taken to remain profitable in economically hostile periods. The study discusses five pricing decisions that took place between the beginning of 1866 and the end of 1873, such as raising the price per issue or advertisement tariffs, and reaches the conclusion that the publishers of Pester Lloyd alternated between market factors during crises, always choosing the one that looked more likely to preserve fiscal balance. This meant that when the information trend was in a more favourable position, they increased the price per issue, whereas a more positive economic trend meant they raised their advertisement tariffs, which is what Balogh describes as the ‘Lloyd-mechanism’.

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