The rule low hanging fruit: it is easier to drive more success from something which is successful than to make something which is not successful a success.
I have been fortunate this week to be involved in Business Roundtable discussions with newsagents in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney where we delve into the performance of the newsagencies represented by those participating. Using reports from the Tower newsagency software we have been looking at business performance from a number of consistent angles. It is the day by day basket analysis which has interested me the most.
In Melbourne on Tuesday, during the roundtable, I noted that greeting cards were in more shopping baskets on a Saturday than any other day in one newsagency. One participant said this was because shoppers had more time on a Saturday. In Brisbane yesterday, another colleague said it was due to weddings in their area – Saturdays being the wedding day. Now, after looking at data from more newsagencies, Saturday does appear to be a stand out day for greeting card basket penetration in newsagencies. Checking data from my own newsagency I can see this is the case.
So, what does this mean? How can we use the data to our advantage? The first step newsagents ought to take is to report on basket penetration by product category by day of week. The Tower software provides this as a standard report.
In a practical sense, knowing the popularity of Saturdays with card buyers enables us to be more attentive, make sure the card section is clean and tidy, staff up to help customers who want it and consider Saturday only offers.
The rule of low hanging fruit in retail means it is easier to drive more success from something which is successful than to make something which is not successful a success. This is a rule I just made up – it is true though – if greeting cards are more successful for you on Saturdays than other days and in more shopping baskets it will be easier for you to leverage more greeting card sales on Saturdays.
Basket analysis such as this available direct from within the software can really help newsagents understand the flow of business and therefore find valuable low hanging fruit opportunities.
I’d be happy to work with any newsagent wanting to undertake deep level basket analysis and compare their business with the pool in my benchmark group.