With the pace and extent of changes in retail – how, why, when and where people shop and what they purchase – today more than ever we need to focus on delivering a compelling reason for people to shop with us.
For newsagents, the most compelling reason for people to shop with you is location. You’re local and have what they want at a price they can justify. (If it is not location what is it?)
My question is, how well do your leverage your location?
Too often, newsagents want to look like capital city retailers, chasing a me-too model. This is not a plan, it is not leveraging what is probably most unique to your business – your location.
So, how local is your business. How connected is your range to the local community? How connected is the business to the local community?
The way to test this is to ask yourself – what if an international chain opened a corporate newsagency next to yours and offered the tradition range of newsagency products – would they take customers from you?
You could say probably not because shoppers like you and your staff?
Okay, what if they dropped their prices slightly or did something else to separate their business from yours? Would they take customers from you? Probably some.
You may comfort yourself that an overseas business is not going to open a newsagency next to yours to take your customers. I’d agree with that. However, it is happening today. Supermarkets, convenience stores, petrol outlets … they are all doing this, eating away at your business, offering something else you don’t offer.
That newsagencies are losing business to supermarkets, convenience stores, petrol outlets is a problem we are not addressing as a channel. Hell we are, for the most part, ignoring it. I think we can address it by being more locally focused, by serving the local community better, by ensuring that they see, understand and feel our local connection – in a way supermarkets, convenience stores, petrol outlets cannot make the local connection.
This is not easy stuff for newsagents to think about or respond to but respond we must. We must address the complex and relentless areas of competition – that we see and that we don’t – as well as the changes in retail. we do this by making more valuable and compelling businesses which serve shoppers in our own backyard.
How seriously local is your business?
This is interesting, making my business more locally focused than supermarkets. I had never thought of that. In my own situation I compete wilt coles and woolies. But I have not been competing with them like I should. Thanks for the poke on this.
Jeff supermarkets are a big threat to us and too many newsagents are letting them get away with it.
To this end I always found that my stationery sales spiked after I made the effort to attend the local Chamber of Commerce meeting (despite it being the last thing I felt like doing after a long day).
The big Duopoly is working v hard to appear LOCAL. Witness Woolies campaign “My Woolies” and now, “Earn and Learn”. Local Woollies manager is always working to help local schools etc etc.Quite entitled to, but you are right. I must not let him cover himself in glory at my expense.