Here in London, magazines are at check out counters in department stores. While the photo is from a Marks & Spencer department store, I have seen this in several different stores.
I am not sure if the move is a reflection on the more traditional magazine retail offering here. I would doubt that as there are plenty of newsagency type outlets around from the national brand, WH Smith, to the smaller independent businesses.
What is interesting about what I saw today at Marks & Spencer is the mix of titles … it’s diverse: GQ, Men’s Health, Top Gear, Wired and Vanity Fair. Not a traditional mix I’d expect in a menswear section where I took the photo. That said, I’d expect that the title selection is based on the shoppers who most commonly present at the counter.
My question for Australian newsagents is: how would you feel if magazines were sold like this at checkout counters in Australian department stores?
A follow up question: what are you doing about this in your newsagency today?
I don’t consider this a threat at all. Supermarkets have been selling mags at the counter for years. We also sell magazines at our counter. It’s another item department stores will shove in the face of their customers with little thought or finesse. We engage with our customers about the magazines on the front counter and this works well for sales.
With magazine sales deminishing I think Dept Stores and Supermakets will eventually move away from these products becasue it’s ‘too much work’. Newsagencies know the product and what customer’s like… if only the publishers and distributors considered Newsagents valuable asset and included us in a more complete model which included subscriptions and electronic offerings.
John, we need to grow magazine sales. Also, we have as much of an obligation as publishers and distributors to increase focus on our channel.
The mags would get browsed a lot here, while the customers waited for a sales person to turn up. Sales – incidental, and may well increase our own business, like having mags in hairdressers does.
Whilst Marks & Spencer consider themselves a Department Store they are actually more like our Discount Department Stores (Big W, Target). There are no Discount Department Stores in the UK. The Supermarkets (Tesco, Asda etc) over there play that role
Big W already sell magazines (although not necessarily in the Menswear section).
Niall M&S feels like a step above Big W, more like a Myer to me.