One fine morning the readers of Times of India (TOI) got an interesting news:henceforth the TOI shall be available on weekdays at Re. 1.50 and not at the earlier at Re. 2.40 The move was described by TOI as an invitation price with a caption, the leaders guard the nations. In cities like Delhi TOI and Hindustan times are head-to-head competition. The circulation and readership are always issues of debate. The Times of India created a storm by going in for a big price cut, a move that was aimed at luring away the readers of its traditional rival, Hindustan Times. HT waited for sometime to see the feasibility of the move, but eventually found that the TOI has no intention of retreating. Even the loyal customers of the Hindustan Times waited for a month, but finally started switching to the TOI.

Finding itself in a soup, HT had to follow suit. It also came out with Re. 1.50 daily edition. With a traditional hotchpotch, the market found a new equilibrium price and then gains for both the rivals in terms of readership. The price cut is history now. Now both the newspapers had to fight seriously for getting the maximum chunk of the advertisement revenues. Since advertisement revenue is the main source of cost financing, both the dailies are facing the problem of increase in the cost of production and distributions. Of late the rivalry has resulted in the in a big non-price competition in terms of supplements, promotion drives, news coverage etc.

But the ultimate winner is the consumer.

The consumer still gets the newspaper at Re. 1.50 with growing number of supplements, better printing quality, a lot of promotional rewards, gifts and better news coverage. We, may, however, expect a tacit collusion between the two dailies in future.

Benefits for both TOI & HT would have been higher if they would have competed primarily for A) Price, B) Quality of coverage, c)Quality of news D) All of these