Each day this week I am sharing a newsagency management benchmark which I hope you find useful. The benchmarks are not rigid, use them as a guide. I have developed these and other benchmarks over years of working with a variety of newsagency businesses in many different situations.
Management benchmark #5: basket size/depth
By basket I mean the items purchased in a single transaction. By size I mean total purchase value. By depth I mean the number of items in a basket.
These benchmark measures will vary by type of newsagency. For example, in a shopping mall business basket size will be deeper. In a newsagency selling lotteries and including this in their basket calculations, the depth will be higher. The key is to measure yours, which your newsagency software should do without effort for you and to make it a goal to improve on this regularly.
The two measures I include here are overall averages for the channel as we are collectively performing at the moment. For ease of comparison, the numbers do not include lottery product sales.
- Basket size: $9.94
- Basket depth: 1.63 items
You can increase basket size and depth by offering impulse purchase opportunities at high traffic locations and not just at the counter, through out of store offers to drive traffic, with over the counter offers and through some loyalty programs – to list just some of the options.
The reality is, with the changes impacting retail generally and our channel in particular, our benchmark aspirations for the two measures noted above need to be 20% ahead of these numbers. Achieve this and you are in a better position to weather the changes playing around us.
I hope this series helps newsagents look at their businesses differently and to ask questions about their performance in the context of best practice in our channel. Newsagencies with the brightest future are those where data is respected and benchmarks are set to be achieved and passed.