Readers drawn from every walk of life

Dubai: It's official. Gulf News reaches out like no other newspaper to the people of the UAE.

Twin studies of newspaper and magazine readership, conducted in the past year, show a unique blend of coverage and dispersion across age and income groups, as well as by nationality, occupation, education and region.

Gulf News stands tall in terms of name recognition and satisfaction, and here delivers this selection of results to give its many followers a flavour of the collected findings.

The two surveys, by specialist research companies Ipsos and Research International, commissioned by Gulf News, were intended simply to gauge the readership habits of residents of the UAE in 2005. They entailed thousands of interviews, designed to represent the whole adult population of just over three million.

IPSOS-STAT is a globally-renowned research firm focusing on market potential and trends, with a presence in Europe, the Americas and Asia-Pacific regions, and more than 400 clients across the Middle East and around the world.

Its comprehensive enquiry confirmed, to start with, that daily newspapers reach over 70 per cent of the UAE population (70.2 per cent), and weeklies over 50 per cent (52.3 per cent), a very extensive domain.

Of the daily publications, Gulf News was chosen by the highest proportion of that readership (23.0 per cent), followed by Al Khaleej (20.8 per cent). Among English-language newspapers, Khaleej Times was a distant second (11.7 per cent).

Likewise, Gulf News led the poll among non-Arab readers, at 40.0 per cent, nearly double the next title (Khaleej Times on 21.5 per cent), a result reflected consistently in age, income and all other subsets.

Gulf News's readership is well spread across age groups, reaching almost a third of 25-34 year-olds (32.8 per cent), over a quarter of 35-44 year-olds (26.3 per cent), as well as a good proportion of the younger generation (24.1 per cent of 15-24 year-olds), and a sizable number (16.7 per cent) of those 45 or over.

Gulf News reaches a diversity of income groups too, with 31.0 per cent earning over Dh10,000 per month, 13.6 per cent in the Dh7,000-Dh10,000 range, and 41.8 per cent in the Dh3,000-Dh7,000 bracket. A similar array of data was recorded for occupations reflecting those categories, such as the 33.4 per cent described as management, professionals or business owners.

Also, geographically within the UAE, a well-balanced distribution was found, with 33.9 per cent in the Abu Dhabi district, 31.9 per cent in the Dubai area, 18.8 per cent in Sharjah, and 15.5 per cent in the other emirates.

Another discovery was the high proportion of readers having completed tertiary (university) or secondary education, 62.7 per cent and 27.1 per cent respectively.

Awareness

Gulf News's flagship weekly publication, Friday, demonstrated an equally wide-ranging audience in terms of age group, while tilted a little more to the older generation than the newspaper itself. Nearly 30 per cent (29.5 per cent) of readers were in the 25-34 age range, 35.7 per cent 45 or over, 21.8 per cent in the 35-44 range, and 26.5 per cent aged 15-24.

That evenness of coverage was amply replicated across incomes: 29.3 per cent earning over Dh15,000, another 29.3 per cent between Dh7,000 and Dh15,000, and 27.5 per cent between Dh3,000 and Dh7,000. The broad spread was mirrored also by occupation, led by employees (35.9 per cent), with a strong showing among Dubai readers (59.3 per cent) in the geographical distribution.

Research International, part of the world's largest communication services company WPP, with an international network of 50 offices, produced a supplementary report. Skilled in advanced quantitative and qualitative research techniques, they provided a complementary set of results, which were synthesised by the prominent consultancy firm McKinsey & Company.

Gulf News was found to have come first to mind among all newspaper readers by a considerable distance (69.8 per cent to 27.0 per cent) in terms of general name awareness, and outperformed the Khaleej Times across the board with regard to satisfaction rating. Of the English-language newspaper readership, most (70 per cent) nominated Gulf News, leading the pack.

In terms of nationality, Gulf News's reach was shown to be significantly towards Westerners (among whom 43 per cent count themselves as readers) and the Indian community (where the figure is 37 per cent).

The Pakistani (10 per cent) and Arab (8 per cent) segments of UAE society also were well represented.