Guys spend more time browsing magazines in newsagencies than women. That’s my unscientific observation at least. Check out any newsagency on weekends, evenings and even weekdays and you are more likely to see guys browsing car magazines and sports magazines. So, I was surprised to see the latest issue of Alpha bagged when it turned up yesterday. They will say that giving away an old copy will drive sales. Maybe so, I doubt it, but maybe so – the bag will block browsing and I would have thought that advertisers would not like that. If I had my way magazines for guys would not be bagged.
While there are newsagents who discourage browsing, I am not on their side. Browsing is an important part of the newsagency shopping experience.
Take the magazine out of the bag. In the case of Alpha we know that doing so increases our sales. Then again, its not particularly hard to get an increase off a very low base.
There are only a few stores that have the opportunity of being the ‘male creche’ – and newsagent is one of them – along with hardware & sport typically. S/c have created comfy lounges in malls, but men still prefer to browse rather than sit.
It is an opportunity to be capitalised on.
Dennis if only publishers would realise that!
We unbag everything that is not a customer put away.
We unbag everything that is not a customer putaway.
shelly,
do you have anyproblems with returns being rejected because they are de-bagged?
In our experience we have found that most bagged items have “Subscription Offers” in them!! Does ALPHA, I haven’t checked yet ?
The trick in some newsagencies is to spot the “Browsers” from the readers.We had occasions when young girls would take photos of hair styles in magazines with mobiles and not purchase them.One occasion, a lady came to the counter with a magazine and asked us to copy some pages for her. Are you buying the MAG. Oh no, i only want one article. Move on the READERS>
PETER
We return everything as tops.
hi, not exactly the area for this but didnt know where to put this question, i was wondering if anyone knows where i can buy out of date kids magazines? including the bagged mags, i make kids showbags and would like to place these old out of date magazines in them, if anyone can help it would be much appreciated thanks….
shelly
do you return everything as tops because thats what your alowed to do? are you a rural newsagent? did you demand this method from the 3 mag dist. companies?
i am very interest to do this. we are located over 200km from the distribution centres and with the losing battle for correct allocations, we have stacks of full supplementary returns every week which cost alot to freight back.
i would be interested to know about the mags to shelley we send quite afew boxes back each week as fulls. i recently found out from nationwide that because we are a country newsagency we did’nt need to send back the dvds they have and other promotions because of the cost maybe this is the same with the mags
Peter/Kellie,
We are 1000k from distribution centre and quite a while ago requested to do all returns as tops. Since then I believe every QLD agent is now allowed to do tops only.
In response to over supply, contact the distributor and kindly let them know that you will be returning all over supplies as tops and contacting the publisher direct if it persists.
Good luck!