Expansion Strategies at Aamulehti: From Political Paper to Regional Champion

Abstract

This paper deals with the concentration of the newspaper market in Finland from a regional perspective. The development started in the late 1970s when Tampere based Aamulehti (“Morning Newspaper”) went on a shopping spree that started the mergers and acquisitions trend in a market that had until then been characterized by local ownership. Today Aamulehti is the daily flagship of the Alma Media Group which challenges the media champion of Finland, Sanoma Group, in the newspaper business. Aamulehti, Finland’s second largest morning newspaper, Kauppalehti, Finland’s only daily business newspaper, and Iltalehti, the country’s second biggest afternoon paper, are the crown jewels of the Alma Media Group. Here, this development is put into the socio-economic context of the Tampere region, where Aamulehti is published, as well as a managerial market-oriented framework with a newspaper industry perspective.

Key Words:

• newspaper innovation
• market model
• new entrants
• consolidation
• concentration
• Finland