Roy Greenslade points to an interesting Scottish survey which found that newspapers are the biggest seller for small shops. Newspapers are always in the top five selling items in Australian newsagencies. I know from my basket research which involved data from more than 100 newsagencies in 2007 and 2006 that in shopping centres, 70% of newspaper sales are single product sales, in high street newsagencies this falls to around 65% and in rural / regional areas this falls to around 45%.
When I met with a senior executive of News Limited in early 2005 we discussed newsagent margin and the static cover price. Her response was that newsagents love newspapers because of the traffic. When I explained that the traffic was inefficient she blamed newsagents. When I explained that publishers often made it difficult to promote other products with newspapers she changed the subject.
There is no doubt that newspapers are important to newsagencies. They generate considerable traffic and keep us top of mind. However, my sense is that some of this traffic is so habit based that the customers do not know they are visiting a newsagency. It’s the paper shop. While it would be easy to say the newsagent is at fault for not changing that perception, we can really only do this if we are unshackeld by suppliers so we can be retailers. For an unregulated channel we sure have a lot of regulations.
Newsagents are not blameless in this. Many in our channel do not pursue add-on sales with enough vigor and sales suffer as a result.
In our case we look carefully at the newspaper purchase from outside the shop to the newspaper display to the counter. We build offers along the way, at the display and at the counter. We change these offers at least weekly. The result is considerably above average newspaper basket efficiency for us.
If I go in to a supermarket, a convinience store, a petrol station or (here in New Zealand) a diary, the milk and bread are always located in the furthest corner of the store.You pretty much HAVE to walk past everything else that’s on offer to find these staple items.
I suspect it would help newsagents if they could do something similar. But I guess newspaper publishers insist their products are displayed near the front of the shop — or somewhere similar.
Mark frequently shows examples of how the counter pace can be used to generate extra sales, but has any work been done on how to layout a newsagency in order to maximise additional sales while still meeting newspaper publishers’ requirements?
How did the spore creature creator cd promotion with the eastern state papers go this weekend? We didn’t get that here in SA which I am a bit annoyed about.
you didn’t miss much
Was it promoted much?
Promoted on almost every second page of the Tele on friday. Front page of the Sat Tele. Also many posters sent.
It was a hit with kids buying tele for the game.
Actually sold out early.
Alan
Thanks for the info Alan