Since newsagents began 130 years ago newspapers have been the core product, the one item just about every customer visited to purchase. They drove the traffic. In 2005, however, we are seeing shopping basket penetration data for high street and shopping centre newsagencies which suggests a fall. This data, representing 8 million baskets worth, shows that in 2003 49.6% of all sales included at least one newspaper. In 2005 that figure has fallen to 40.4%.
This change can be attributed to newsagencies carrying a greater variety of product; that newspapers are available in more retail outlets; that over the counter sales for newspapers are falling; and/or that sales of other items in newsagencies (lotteries for example) have increased.
No matter what reason for the change, it is real and should be acted upon.
Whereas previously we used to use the newspaper traffic to try and leverage sales of other items, we have developed a strategy to try and leverage newspaper sales from other high traffic items. We see this as a tipping point, a realisation that newspapers are not the might traffic generator they once were.
Our goal is to lift basket penetration for newspapers in our newsagency to 2003 levels.
Talk to those who owned newsagencies up to the 1990s and they would respond saying that everyone who wants to buy a paper buys a paper. I don’t agree. Hence our strategy. We’ve been driving sales efforts at our lottery counter (a high traffic generator) and now plan to push elsewhere in our shop. I’m confident significant numbers of customers leave our shop who would buy a newspaper if we offered it to them. The challenge is to find the approach which works and which is cost effective.
Publishers need to engage as well. They need to develop in store marketing strategies beyond competitions which reward newsagent success and build a consumer connect with the newspaper as a newspaper again.
There is a certain arrogance among publishers that they are the heroes to newsagents and that it is their traffic which props up the struggling retail channel. More open and honest communication could navigate a win win here and engage newsagents in boosting over the counter sales of newspapers by leveraging other traffic.