Sun Daily

The Sun (太陽報) is one of the newspapers in Hong Kong. It was first published in March 1999 and has been established for 4 years since its first publication. It belongs to the Oriental Press Group Limited (東方報業集團有限公司).

The main market of The Sun is in Hong Kong. Yet, it is found that people outside Hong Kong can hardly obtain updated Hong Kong news. Therefore, the Oriental Press Group is now planning to publish a North American edition for readers who live in New York and Toronto. Not only can this let people in North America get more up-to date news on what is happening in Hong Kong, but also diversify the market of Sun Daily.

There is also an electronic version of The Sun on the Internet. Both the newspaper and the electronic version are written in traditional Chinese.

Table of contents

1 Background
2 Style
3 Readership
4 Major Competitors
5 Online Version
6 Hotline
7 Contact
8 External link

Background

"No fear for wind and storm and with the emergence of the Sun, a sharp contrast will be found between black and white". ( 無懼風雨，太陽一出，黑白分明) was the slogan used by The Sun when it first appeared in the market.

Since the newspaper market in 1999 has already been well-developed, The Sun adopted an agressive marketing strategy to gain as much market share as possible. They lowered the price to only $2 when it first emerged in the market. This triggered a price war among all the local newspapers in Hong Kong. At that time, most newspapers reduced their prices by half. However this competiton did not last very long. The price of all newspapers gradually rose again after a few months' time. The Sun followed and gradually raised the price as well. Ultimately this price war made 6 newspaper companies ran out of business.

In addition to price-cutting, The Sun used various methods to attract people to buy their paper, such as giving away T-shirts with the The Sun's logo. Moreover, it enclosed some souveniors such as toys, books and fast-food restaurant discount coupons.

Style

The newspaper provides various kinds of news everyday. It includes local and international news, financial news, entertainment news, sports news, technology information, horse-racing news and news reporting trendy stuff among young people.

Regarding the horse-racing news, it has gained a very good reputation among horse gamblers. For the entertainment news, it reports both the local and foreign celebrities' news, so as to entertain different citizens' interests. In addition, it often offers some coupons to the readers. It is a way to attract more buyers.

In the page of financial news, there is a column for some financial analysts and economic experts to write articles related to the financial and stock market in Hong Kong. To further diversify its newspaper, The Sun has been publishing a guide book with information of secondary schools and overseas schools for Form 5 students to read before the release of HKCEE results.

For the electronic version of the newspaper, one can even search for different news in the past, give comments through email, or vote for hot debated issues on the website. The latest feature of the electronic newspaper is football news. It helps football lovers to catch up with the matches' results. Moreover, the electronic newspaper is going to develop a more vibrant one to replace the current version.

Readership

Over 1,000,000 people read the Sun daily everyday and 29,000 readers subscribe its electronic newspaper. It is the third best-selling newspaper in Hong Kong, whereas Oriental Daily and Apple Daily rank first and second respectively.

The Sun always sponsors organizations which promote teenage functions, for instance, JSSE, so as to increase the teenage pool to buy its newspaper. These sponsors are mainly communication services, moblie phone companies and supermarkets.

Most of the readers are youngsters and bourgeois. As their purchasing power is relatively high, it attracts people from different fields. They want to promote their products and pay money to put advertisements on the newspaper. The advertising fee is the lowest among the local newspapers as they have guaranteed.