University students and the newspaper deal my customers miss out on

University students can get daily newspapers on campus for an annual fee of between $7.00 and $20.00. At the start of the school year they buy a card and show that when they visit the campus bookshop (or some other central location depending on the campus) to collect their newspaper.

While I support the strategy of getting university students in the habit of reading the newspaper daily, it frustrates me that I don’t have a similar year in advance offering I can make to my customers. I am sure that if newsagents had an over the counter paid in advance offering they could lock in customers. I am not proposing $7.00 for a year of newspapers. No, the fee to a newsagent customer could be closer to the home delivery subscription offer which is generously discounted.,

I recall discussing this with a newspaper circulation executive in the early 1990s. His only concern was tracking the collection of the paper by the right customer. I know that at the universities they are not even verifying student cards. It is easy for one card to be shared among many since the subscriber card is not looked at.

In newsagencies it would be easy to give customers a card with a barcode and to scan that barcode each day to track that only one newspaper is collected.

Newsagents and newspaper publishers know that subscription customers are, in the main, loyal. Not addressing the loyal over the counter customers leaves their business vulnerable from a newsagent as well as publisher perspective.