Advertising Age in the US is reporting a decline in US newsstand sales of magazines in the second half of last year.
Magazine subscriptions and overall audiences usually grow or at least hold up from year to year, but their continued newsstand weakness is worrisome because advertisers consider single-copy sales a gauge of consumer demand while publishers use newsstands to attract potential subscribers.
Then there is this interesting par about the channel:
Conde Nast, where newsstand sales decreased 10.3%, stressed as it has in the past that it is increasing cover prices and abandoning inefficient newsstand outlets in a successful bid to make its newsstand sales more profitable overall.
While our market magazine retail channels are different to the US and consumer engagement with magazines equally different, the latest newsagency sales benchmark study suggests we ended 2010 with some challenging numbers.
Newsagents can read this and worry or they can be proactive. There are plenty of proactive steps we can take in our businesses to show up and even grow magazine sales. While some of the steps we can take are challenges by poor decisions and damaging actions by magazine distributors, doing nothing will increase the pain from the decline.
how do you persuade customers to spend more $$ when their basic expenses are rising like a rocket.