There are plenty of newsstands like this on the streets of Shanghai. This city has a population or around 22 million so the market is there. These newsstands appear to be the only newspaper / magazine outlets from my few hours on the street. I certainly did not see newspapers and magazines in c-stores, cafes or coffee shops.
What I loved about this particular newsstand was that the operator had no qualms about people reading the product. Nice customer service … I see a lot of that in China.
You can click on the image for a larger version.
Off-topic, and I’m sorry about that, but…
I heard from a customer that The Australian is having a price hike to $2.
I’ve done a cursory search in here, but saw nothing, so… Is it kosher?
TRUE STORY . RECIEVED FAXES ABOUT 2 WEEKS AGO AND EMAILS
$2 M-F SAT $3
After 20 odd years, the one thing I’ve found about mags is that you cannot stop people reading the mags and if it gets you upset you are in for a hard life.
You are not going to stop it so as Mark indicated here by the newsstand you can use it as an chance to gain goodwill and most customers will eventually make purchases and become loyal shoppers.
The “this is not a library” mentality only hurts the retailer.
100% agree Luke.
Re Aus. price increase. We havn’t received any advice. When is the price rise from???
1st of october
Luke, I used to be the “this is not a library” type but that was on subagent rates, with a small range and maybe a bad attitude from me. Browsers don’t bother me at all now and on direct supply with a strong range we are happy to have browsers and sales of magazines are booming. I am sure that browsing must contribute to better sales.
However there is a difference between browsers and users. We have one customer who read a weekly magazine front to back cover every week without fail and has never brought anything from us.
I think that for every customer that abuses the privlege of browsing there is probably 15 to 20 customers will do the right thing and purchase. We have to make news genies as friendly and inviting as possible. Not to many other businesses frown on customers looking at the products they are wishing to purchase.
haha Adrian, that’s for sure. I just spent 15 minutes browsing the vacuum cleaner section of the local Harvey Norman.
NO- ONE came near me to offer help or say hello, in an Enormous store with about 10 staff in view ( and three customers) I purposefully did not go and get help, I’ll pop into The Good Guys tomorrow to get a bit of advice ! I don’t let anyone browse my store for five minutes or more before passing by and greeting them, to give them a chance to ask for help.
Hi Carmen, these are the types of customers you really need to ignore.
If you knew me you wold know that is a big call from me as I have no patience for scabs that want something for nothing but you will never stop this person coming in as he/she thinks it is a game and would like seeing you get annoyed so just focus on your normal customers. Remember 80% of your income will only come from 20% of your customers.
Just like school kids, the more you get agitated with what they do the more they do it.
Thanks for the info re the Aus.
When the Courier Mail was going up, we got the advice from our supplying agent the week before. But it was the wrong week. We were told about it to be happening a week before it was supposed to.
A source of great mirth for a couple of weeks 😆