Now this is competition. The picture says it all. On one corner of a back street in Central Hong Kong is a Circle K store and on the opposite corner, of a very narrow street, is a 7-Eleven. The product mix is the same as is their store size. The only differences are the brand and what each stands for and the customer service.
This in-your-face competition is what newsagents are yet to grasp. If another brand opens up a newsagency next to an existing newsagency they would be called all sorts of names. This would happen because of our protected past. Competition, direct newsagent against newsagent competition is something we are yet to deal with.
What I am talking about is different to my comments about Australia Post government owned stores – they use a government protected monopoly brand to take business from us for the profit of the government. No, what I saw today was free market unprotected competition. The only monopoly in play is the brand.
What the photo says to me is that the brand is the thing. In the world of Australian newsagencies, the current brands are: Newspower, newsXpress, Nextra (and its subsets), Supanews, Lucky Charm and the generic Newsagency – but we all have a bit of that.
Circle K and 7_Eleven are not tied to a category, they are not relying on any business other than their branded stores to build consumer perception. This is what we have to do.