If only Office spent as much money delivering lowest prices as they do in claiming that they offer lowest prices. Check out a price comparison published in the Adelaide Advertiser yesterday. The difference between Officeworks and Newspower is extraordinary.
I am surprised that with evidence like this that someone does not challenge the Officeworks claim. of course, they will say they are lower through their price guarantee. the ACCC should reject this as it’s a con as consumers only get Officeworks to be lower by shopping around themselves – most will not do this, they will believe the Officeworks advertising spin.
The message here for Australian and small businesses families is simple – for back to school, back to uni, back to work – shop at your local newsagent. besides competitive prices, you are leaving more money in the local community.
I love this sort of comparison as it proves what many of us spruik but customers find hard to believe as there seems to be that sense among customers that Officeworks is large and is like a supermarket and therefore much be cheaper overall.
I sometimes do these comparisons by sticking brochures from Aus Post or Officeworks and showing “Our Price”.
Works for me.
every one should be cautious of any company who offers that “find it cheaper and we will beat it my x%”
bunnings, officeworks, some liquor chains.
as mark says above, consumers are the ones who are sposed to shop around to prove the price is cheaper, but they dont.
they make it up elsewhere instore or count on the tinyest percentage of people actually calling them out on price
I am printing this and displaying throughout my stationary department and at the counter. Next year I might do a comparison ad leading up to back to school.
I am sitting here saying “Yes there is a God” Although I am cut off by flood water those heading to Cairns to shop can’t and those already there “saving money are now stuck for several days – costing them lots of money. Should have stayed home and shopped with where prices are the same or better, Tra la la Justice.
I’m going to check my local 2 newsagents over the weekend – one is a main road operator, the other in a centre.
I’m going to bet that both come out higher than the BigW price. And that one of the 2 will be higher than the Officeworks price.
I maintain my position that while newsagents are split between good pricing and ‘convenience’ pricing it makes it difficult to market the position of a newsagent as the place to go for stationery. However I may be proved wrong with this experiment.
Blake i just did the comparision in our shop and came in at $20.71 so i think you will be shocked at how cheap newsagencies are
Blake, please post your results. I am confident that any newsagent following our brochure promoted prices will slay the large stores.
I posted Marks blog on Facebook and will copy Allan and display in my back to school area.
I get really annoyed at Big W’s “Cha-ching” thing at the moment. I was in there one day last week to pick up some canvasses I had printed, and wandered past their bulk bins at the front of the store with lots of different BTS items at supposed super charp prices. Because all the bins were marked with $1 and $2 posters, people just ‘assume’ they are cheap. when looking at the items they simply are not cheaper by any stretch of the imagination. In fact they had Faber Castell 10pk Connectors for $7.48!!!! Our Newspower catalogue price is $2.95 and our standard everyday sell price is only $5.45. If your not a newsagent and you see these posts – YOU ARE BEING DUPED!!!
Blake,
$19.54 at newsXpress Eli Waters…….
….did I mention we would pack it for you?
At no extra charge.
Not a service offered at BigW…..
Cheers
Al
Thanks for the responses so far, good to see some cheap newsagents.
I definitely will post back the results.
Not cheap Blake…..good value. It’s great to have you involved in this discussion.
Blake,
We came in at $23.78 but that was with an 8GB USB as I have just sold out of 4GB after a uni study group found out how cheap they were and bought everything I had.
As with Al I will pack it for you, last Friday (in Sydneys record breaking heat) we had an elderly lady do her back to school shopping for the grandkids when she mentioned she was catching the bus home I organised to drop it off to her home that evening.
Jessie
How are you doing the price comparison , eg what type of dictionary are we talking about metal sharpener or plastic cheap scissors or good quality ? Schools here are more specific down to the brands eg dictionary has to be a a certain brand , metal sharpener specific glue sticks etc .
What you do not understand is that until newsagents get organised and market themsleves consistently, they will never win. The lowest price thing has been tested in court many years ago and has been approved. Its not the marketing its the perception of newsagents as a collective, that is the problem, not the marketing. compare newsagent to newsagent and they lack consistency and range. does not matter if newsxpress, nextra or newspower, ALL of the back to school catalogues have local newsagent on them. Yes we are all proud to be newsagents but we are judged on the lowest common denominator which waht i have seen should not be allowed to be called a newsagents or the better ones like me should come up with another name?
‘Mark’ There are marketing groups doing this.
Brendan – I agree that good value is better phrasing than cheap.
I think the USB may be the killer here. I don’t think the comparison will be totally fair if the USB drive is say $10. Which honestly at a convenience price isn’t horrible, especially if it was 8gb as 4gb is harder to get now.
Shawn – I was actually just discussing this at work with a colleague who was talking about Officeworks offering to fill a school book orders. The $60 school list ended up being $74 from Officeworks. Parents were not happy with substitutions made too.
Without having exact items, and knowing what substitutions are made it’s very difficult to compare.
Especially as you could have things like exercise books where on the day BigW might have had a 5c special on one brand or a generic. Heck my mum has some left over that she uses as note paper from when she got 10 packs (48p) for 1c per pack when I was in school. (I’m almost 30 now).
Mark I understand what you are saying but the recnet back to school catlogue tagged you all as newsagents. Do a brand health study and you will find out what I am talking about. the perception of newsagents as a collective is not very good as we are judged by the lowest common denominator. Everyone knows that BIG W, officworks etc are not the cheapest on everything, where they win is perception and marketing. Doing a catlgue twice a year on stationery is not going to get us anywhere.
I have tweeted and facebooked this . Thanks Mark.
I think another problem could be that if you were to go to any office works the cost would be $36.49, any Big W would be $24.57, you may to 5 different newsagents and get 5 different prices.
And one more thing, every newsagency may stock different items. Most of the customer wants to shop everything in one place. I think we need to work on the range of the item first then thinking about the price.
Nerissa I was flabbergasted at the Newspower price (I pay $3.02 for 10 pk
of FC connectors and sell them for $9.95)
How much are you paying for them if you
are selling them at $2.95? Is it a mistake?
I have left Newspower because the margins are too slim but the connectors sound a ridiculously low price.
Are you using them as a lead loss item – I would be interested to know.
Hope you don’t think I’m being rude but I
was truly startled at the price.
im in a small country town, had a local resident from my town call me from officeworks in cairns (2 hrs away)as she was doing her BTS shopping, to see if i could supply the required exercise books as officeworks had sold out. it took all my will power to bit my tongue and say yes i had them, and of course i would put them away for her to pick up when she got back to town. i was blown away with her nerve to say she was actually calling from inside the officeworks store. Still felt good at the end because i remained polite, might get her order next year maybe lol
Mark @ 15:
“lowest common denominator” that’s exactly what I’m referring to. The newsagent near me lost my business due to convenience prices (he used to be good value like others on this thread seem to be). Which is a shame because he had a good business market focus before that, lots of small business were buying there – he even had a separate delivery van for it.
I know the other newsagent (the centre one) has a good range and good value art supplies. They often fill spare shops in the centre with them or have mall tables setup. But I’m not sure how their pricing is on general stationery.
Rick,
Well done on biting your tongue for that customer but do yourself a favour and ask her for her business next year. Invite her to compare your prices and explain to her the benefits you can offer. I got sick of hearing about Officeworks and started asking people (or daring) them to compare prices….one lady saved $40.00 on one booklist…..she bought in another 2 for us to pack…..just got to ask. I also saved a customer $18 on an Ink cartridge yesterday by daring them to compare.
Al
As far as the product comparison goes the photo shows the Websters English Dictionary (catologue price of $2.49) so I based it on the cheaper end of the scale. In saying that though, most items were quality brands. Steadtler,UHU etc etc
Our back to school consists of maths grid books and music books sold to mums struggling in with very full BIG W bags. Very soon Big W will sell out of most BTS items and customers will love us for having book covering and other items they require.
I know some of our prices are less than Big W but am over telling customers.
We have stocked Spencil this year and it is selling extremely well.
$19.13 here with a mix of catalogue and off the shelf items.
Had a book list come in today – cost the customer $78.92 from us vs Landmark @ 98.70 vs Officeworks @ $104.95
When I priced my dictionaries and school text books I did a google and found I was the same on most and adjusted my price a dollar 2 on one or 2 items. I was delighted with closed roads to cairns. Wish they were closed a day or two longer . Its been pretty busy with back BTS this week. Get cranky when they just come in for text books. Had a school principle call me and ask if I could copy a book list for a parent who wanted to go to Cairns to shop as the one he had faxed them had not faxed well. I gave the person a list smiled through while making them squirm when I asked them if they wanted to come back later when I had filled the order. They decided they didn’t want it after al! Not sure if they have made it past the Mcleod River.
Good to see newsagents re-tweeting my tweet about this. The further this story spreads the better. others have printed the image and stuck it on the wall of their shop. The channel should be proud.
Came to $26.95 here,on generic brands, but then we do 20% off if you pick yourself, and 10% if I do it for you. Mind you, our schools have asked for brand names on some items that would make this list pricier!
All our schools have asked for brand names . Top of the range dictionary calculators glue paper the works. They think parents are made of money .
Interesting – the schools in our area don’t care what brands we put in the pack. We used to use cheap products to keep the price down. One year we offered two different packs (a basic and premium) and the most expensive ones outsold the cheaper ones by so much we have never competed on price again. Sales of the packs increase every year.
We include things like Maped stationery, Frixion pens, Staedtler erasers, Crayola pencils, etc. Keeps the kiddies happy which keeps the parents happy.
We don’t do BTS yet we beat the Officeworks price. What a rip off.
I’m 2.50 less than Officeworks and I, too, am not doing Back to School.
Well I couldn’t do both price checks as one was cut off to me from the floods (I’m in QLD).
But the one I was expecting to be the more expensive of the 2 came to $28 (don’t have cents as I was just tallying in my head as I went through). Better than I expected. Expensive items – dictionary $10, USB $8. Not sure how that compares.
Well done Blake for taking the time to do this. The dictionary in the pic is on special for $2.49 so if you take $7.50 from the $28 you can see that this Newsagent was very very competitive indeed.
Now we Newsagents need you to go forth and spread the good news…….to everybody you meet !!!
Cheers
Al
Blake, I just did a comparison on ink jet cartridges today and we were cheapest on 12 of 15 cartridges and this was against office works and an US online company starting up here called Staples. The prices were our standard everyday prices so imagine how good we are during a Hot Ink Sale. We’d all love for you to become an advocate of newsagents.
BTS can very much be a mixed bag.
Some retailers may keep a high margin on non-essential items to compensate for the abuse taken on loss leaders.
Woo hoo, Big W out of rulers. Do I put my prices up on rulers or is that being nasty!
It amazes me when these mums come in for items Big W doesn’t have that they don’t purchase anything else, no magazines, lotto, not even a $1 instant. Very disciplined shoppers!
@Jenny, how far is Big W from your store?
@Jenny,
How far is closest BigW from your store?
Jenny, given that people shop at Big W because they think you are more expensive you ought to meet their expectation … and bank a result.
I am very surprised that the GNS promotion is slated to go till 6th February. WTH? I have taken most of the gear off special and put it up to normal retail or higher price, despite the flyer going out to my suburb. My experience is that customers are not so price sensitive right now. They know they have left their shopping too late! the time to hit it hard was 2 weeks ago -short and sharp with less breadth of product imho!
M – maybe 100 meters.
Mark, we sure are!
The thing is these are not my regular customers, they are customers coming to centre specifically to shop at Big W.
The mums that come in from private primary schools just have a list and buy it all they can from us. I often give a discount off the total because they spend time in shop, don’t grumble and often buy a few mags as well. Perfect customers!
Good stuff Jenny. We can’t win on consumer perception re price so we should meet it. Plus we should meet perception on service – that we are better than Big W.