The basket analysis work I am doing for around fifty newsagents shows an increase in newspaper sales between November 2006 and November 2007 for some newsagencies but a decrease for most. While some of these newsagencies will have shifted some retail customers to less profitable home delivery arrangements, many have lost sales to either other retail outlets or as newspaper customers altogether.
What is most interesting is the tracking of newspaper sales against sales of other categories – seeking an understanding of the importance of newspapers for pulling customers into newsagencies. For years newsagents have accepted flat earnings from newspapers – no increase in cover price, no change in profit – because of the view they were crucial to pulling traffic. Seeing growth elsewhere in a newsagency and a fall in newspaper sales suggests newspapers are not as important as we thought.
Publishers demonstrate our relevance by participating in more flexible marketing strategies in other retail outlets.