We have introduced a column of food titles into our weekly magazine display for the next few weeks to increase sales of these titles. The new column is next to our TV related titles. While creating the space has been a challenge, we expect it to be worth it.
My feeling is that in our store many food magazine purchases are on impulse. The change has been in place since Wednesday and already we are a lift.
We first played with our weeklies by introducing a column of crossword titles more than a year ago. This has been a tremendous success and remains in place today. We do not see the food column as staying for anything more than a few weeks – we do not ant to reduce browsing of the rest of the magazine department. We are, however, likely to use this created space to feature other categories on rotation – but we will only do this with categories which work with the weekly magazine shopper.
In this marketplace we need to take every step possible to extend the basket.