The marketing approach by newspaper publishers is, in my view, selfish and ignorant. Look at these offers from The Age:
They discount to customers far more than the meagre margin made by retailers. They offer the discount by locking you into a service that is patchy in performance at best.
And, their offers ignore the easiest low hanging fruit opportunity to drive loyalty – the already loyal over the counter newspaper customer.
They could easily pitch to over the counter customers a pre-pay offer that achieves the same lock in, which is what the publisher wants for their advertising pitch.
If they had not disrespected newsagents so much, they could have worked with the channel for a genuinely mutually beneficial result. Instead, they pursue poor performing home delivery at a discount far deeper than the wholesale cost of the paper.
Maybe I am missing something, but, from where I sit, the move looks ignorant.