A customer in one of my newsagencies complained on the weekend about the price of marie claire. They had been told to buy this issue by a friend and questioned why our price was higher than in the supermarket where their friend purchases a copy. The price difference relates to the sunglasses which are packaged with the magazine in some newsagencies. This is not a new phenomenon – increasing the cover price when there is a premium gift with the magazine. Indeed, I like that newsagents get access to differentiating offers like this since supermarkets get access to their own offers from time to time.
But back to the customer. We explained the sunglasses but they didn’t accept that. They didn’t want the glasses and suggested we keep them and they get the magazine for $1.00 less. Showing them the price printed on the cover did not budge them.
With price being such an important factor in today’s retail environment, publishers will need to think carefully about moved which result in different prices in different retail channels. It doesn’t take much to get a customer on their high horse and causing a scene at the counter.
It’s the same as buying a tin of Heinz baked beans in Coles and paying one price and then paying another price in Safeways. It’s the same product but a different price. Nothing new there….
Except that one pack of Heinz baked beans would have to have something extra and that both packs would have the retail prices printed on them by the manufacturer.
whinge whinge …. what else can they do???
The sun glasses could be a $1.00 extra promotion as with the newspapers available at participating newsagent only. We would need a bit of notice so that we could accept or rejectthe promo.
This may be too cumbersome for the distributors to cope with but is a possible solution.