Sales of health magazines are booming, growing more than 10% in 2006 compared to overall magazine category growth of just under 4%.
Responding to this growth and the opportunity of several new titles, we have broken with traditional newsagent magazine layout thinking and moved the Health category to better real-estate.
Our health titles used to be wedged between wedding and children’s titles. Now they are located near the top of our busiest magazine aisle and next to the popular food section. The move helped us address a location dilemma – the placement of food titles which focus on health such as the Better Homes Diabetic Living.
A side benefit of the move is people finding new titles when they get to an area their favorite titles used to be. Given the frequency of customer visits many become store blind so changes in magazine locations can boost sales.
Newsagents tend to see magazines as set and forget products. In some respects, with 1,300+ titles in stock, moving categories can be too daunting to contemplate. Our simple move took two hours of researching and planning and another hour and a half to execute. It was like playing a puzzle game, moving block by block and sometimes going backward until the goal was achieved.
The move is less than a week old so it is too early to assess any impact. We’ll measure carefully and adjust as guided by sales data.