TheBuzz Erika Engle

Hawaiian Telcom's yellow pages directory tops new survey

Competition in the directory business has grown to the point that the three companies commissioned an independent survey to determine in whose directory the most fingers do the walking.

See kids, back when your parents walked barefoot to school, in the snow, uphill both ways and the pterodactyl was the state bird -- there was only one phone directory. There were white pages and yellow pages from the phone company. Period.

These days, advertising sales have made yellow pages directories big business, in printed form, online and on CD-ROM.

The industry grew to $16 billion in 2005, according to research from Connecticut-based Simba Information Inc. cited by the Boston Globe.

The Hawaii survey by New Jersey-based Knowledge Networks/ SRI was conducted from January through December of last year.

"This is a new initiative within this whole yellow pages industry," said Ron Montgomery, vice president and general manager of Hawaiian Telecom Directories.

"To my knowledge, this is the first year that a study like this has been done, to try to capture market information that isn't unique to each publisher -- so it kind of creates a level playing field," he said.

Each company still conducts its own research, but the Knowledge Networks/SRI study asked neutral questions, such as which was the last directory a respondent used.

The survey found that Hawaiian Telcom garnered 55.3 percent of respondents' votes, including 42.3 percent specifically for the yellow pages. The balance were for its Oahu companion, Leeward, Windward and East Honolulu directories.

Paradise Pages received 31.8 percent of the votes; 29.5 percent for its Oahu directory and 2.3 percent for its Windward Oahu and Big Island directories.

Ad-Ventures got 13 percent of the votes, with 12.6 citing the Oahu Islandwide directory. Its East Honolulu directory got four-tenths of a percentage point.