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Magazine covers and fickle customers

Mondays are a great day for comparison of magazine performance in newsagencies. We have new issues of Woman’s Day, New Idea, New Weekly and TV Week. In my newsagency we track sales closely and what happens on a Monday can set the tone for the week. We compare Monday sales with the average of the last 8 weeks. Today was especially interesting. All titles were up between 10% and 15% except for New Idea which was down 10%. Woman’s Day and New Idea have received the same promotional space and they are next to each other in two prime locations in store. So the only reason we can attribute to the fall is the cover and accompanying poster. I’ve checked our basket companion sales data and New Idea single copy sales are steady, it’s the companion sales which are down.

The risk in considering this is that the dataset is small. However, based on past experience, in our shop, Monday performance is usually a good predictor of the rest of the week. I’m tempted to do something to push New Idea but instead will let it sit and see if the ‘prediction’ is right. What’s odd is that New Idea has been a very strong performer all year.

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