Newsagents are valuable to publishers for their newspaper home delivery service. This service is unique on a range of fronts which are worth newsagents contemplating as they discuss how to respond to the contracts proposed by News Limited. Here are some of the many unique points offered by newsagents:
- One stop shop. Just about everywhere in Australia, newsagents deliver all newspapers available for subscription delivery. In the US, each newspaper uses a separate carrier. I know places where there can be five different delivery vehicles delivering newspapers each day.
- Local service. People like to be able to organise and adjust their home delivery face to face.
- Newsagents are spongues. When things go wrong, and they do (DVD promotions, CD promotions etc) customers want someone local to listen to their complaint.
- Newsagents understand local requirements. A driver sees a road as a means to an end. A newsagent sees a road as a somewhere where friends and neighbours live.
- Newsagents offer a premium service. A truck driver will throw a newspaper. A good newsagent delivers the newspaper where and how the customer wants – there are some weird requirements out there and good newsagents respect them all.
- Credit. Newsagents give credit whereas publishers want money up front. While there is a cost to credit, there is also an element of local customer service.
- It’s personal. Newspapers are local with stories about the city in which they are puublished. This local connection is reflected by newsagents in the local service they provide.
Newspaper publishers who sell home delivery as a premium service ought to consider these and the many other points of the benefits of the newsagent home delivery model before taking further steps to break it up.
Spot on Mark we provide exceptional service to our customers because we value them and they appreciate the service we provide it is disappointing this is not acknowledge by publishers at the end of the day all we want is a fair days pay and suitable return on our investment! I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
The Publishers have not kept up with a fair and equitable financial return on our investment in this category over the past ten years.That in itself is deplorable. I feel that Industry associations should have in the past dealt with outside professional negotiators when it came to contract renewal as we as Newsagents in associations are not expert in this field.
News Ltd openly state that they do not recognise Goodwill value in “their” contract.
News Ltd openly state that they look at the whole of the Newsagency income as the return on investment to the Newsagent and do not look at just their products sold on a sale and return basis to the Newsagent for a selected category fair financial return on investemnt.
That in itself is evidence that News Ltd want to screw us at any opportunity.
Fairfax is another story where we now only receive 16.6% instead of 25% return on subscription sales.
We need leadership and professional guideance in these areas.