For years there have been differences between how magazine publishers with products in newsagencies and supermarkets treat these retail channels. While newsagents have complained, they have done nothing serious about it. I think we are approaching a time when we will need to act.
The challenges now are about much more than better gifts with purchase for supermarket shoppers.
The supply model used today disadvantages newsagents as it encumbers our businesses with financial,. labour and space costs that our competitors do not have. But even that is not why I say we are approaching a tipping point.
Price is the issue. More and more I am seeing different pricing in supermarkets for titles we sell in newsagencies. News Life Media and Bauer Media are the main publishers engaged in this. They must be doing it to drive traffic to supermarkets and away from newsagents for their products. Why else would they make their products so much cheaper in our competitors?
- Why price Inside Out $2.00 less in Coles than the newsagency 50 metres away?
- Why bundle weekly Bauer titles in supermarkets at a discount to nearby newsagents?
- Why financially support supermarkets where you discount titles to preserve full price margin while not offering the same to newsagents?
The only reason can be to drive supermarket sales.
Think abut the long-term implications – either newsagencies close or they reduce their reliance on magazines. What that may not hurt many of the titles sold by Bauer and News Life Media, it will hurt them and it will hurt many other publishers.
Today, the Australian newsagency channel is still the largest single magazine retail channel in the country. But for how much longer? Those who appear hell-bent on directing shoppers away from us need to consider the bigger picture for all publishers as well as for small business newsagents and the vital and quintessentially Australian role they play in there communities.
Publishers: every action you take against us makes magazines less profitable for us and informs our own actions. Every time you facilitate supermarkets presenting your product as better value from them you harm our businesses. You’ll blame us when we are less interested in your products or quit as you have blamed us in the past, not thinking for a moment about the role you played in us deciding as we have done.
Every benefit you give supermarkets, every time you make them more appealing than newsagents is another decision against the future of the Australian newsagency channel. Shame on you as we have served you well. It is newsagents who have been key to your success and newsagents off of whom you make more money.
Magazine sales are on the steep decline with a definite end date. They are making decisions to preserve their product shelf presents for another few years. So they favour Supermarkets which are a more consistent, abundant and location proof channel in comparison to news-agencies. Loyalty in big business … Bs.
2 MAGS FOR $7 in woollies newidea ,who that’s life . but looks like they are doing it for any mag because take5 and tvweek where in the same stand
Its simple. Bauer needs supermarkets more than the supermarkets need Bauer.
The amount of money the big 2 supermarkets make from selling Bauer mags probably isn’t huge in the grand scheme of things and some of it would be made up for as people simply bought other mags instead. But Bauer as a company makes a lot of money on its big-name mags through supermarket sales (especially the impulse purchases at checkout counters) and needs to keep the supermarkets happy.