It struck me this morning standing in line to order a Bacon and Egg McMuffin in Sydney for a breakfast on the go that in front of me was a key reason newspaper publishers virtually ignored retail newsagents to drive over the counter newspaper sales.
Newsagents can’t offer the same value proposition as, say, a McDonalds. McDonalds advertises in the newspaper, it has products that can be bundled with a newspaper and thereby deliver access to the newspaper for almost nothing yet record it as circulation.
I can see that a newspaper ‘sold’ through McDonalds with a meal bundle is more valuable and rewarding for a publisher than a newspaper sold in a newsagency at full cover price. They would think that the McDonalds ‘sale’ is more certain and can be budgeted for. The advertiser probably makes this point too.
Since we don’t have fuel, burgers, suagry frozen water drinks or many other highly sought after daily purchase items that we control with which to bundle newspapers we will not be the focus of attention of newspaper publishers. I suspect we represent the old-school approach to newspaper retail they maintain because they have to and not because we represent what they see as future.
I wish newspaper publishers would give retail newsagents a go. I am certain that retail newsagents can grow newspaper sales through genuine partnership with newspaper publishers.
Mark, the real reason that the publishers don’t use the retailers (directly that is) is
because they don’t have the resources (and wouldn’t pay if they did have) to do the delivery.
It has always been that the delivery agents deliver to the retailer because that is the only way the drops could occur in a timely fashion.
Once all the poor distributors have been
killed off (not too far away IMHO) THEN WE WILL PROBABLY GET DIRECT DROPS
AT 25% AND BE TOLD TO PUSH THE PRODUCT OR ELSE.
I, quite frankly, “don’t give a damn” (famous quote) anymore about papers.
A case of what you see is all there is, to use Daniel Khaneman’s phrase. Publishers see millions of breakfasts sold to which they can attach a paper. Retailers see their customers being rewarded for becoming more promiscuous. You are correct to say some publisher needs to find the solution. Otherwise they are investing in their demise.
To think that McDonalds is in any shape or form paying for the newspaper would be extremely naive. It’s all about readership numbers.
No reason why we couldn’t do this in the newsagency environment.
We could give a newspaper away with every Lotto Maxipick we sell….or Australian Women’s Weekly magazine…….or every Mother’s Day card……
Possibilities are endless.
It may steal back some newspaper readers from the supermarkets or petrol stations?
Id give away papers too if the publisher paid me to do it. If I got say 500 free papers per day Id give them all away no problems, buy a mag get a paper, buy a lollie get a paper buy a paper get a paper. Not hard but the key is it needs top be a free paper for me as it is with maccas.
I am not in business to be giving anything away for free . Even when something is free there is still work involved ,who wants to get up early to hand out free papers ,still have to do returns etc and overall why wouodmyoumwant to pay staff to do this . I say no to free papers . Let maccas have them
Do the sums.
If you gave away the paper free with every greeting card purchased ….
Do we know that these are free papers? Everyday papers supplied to maccas are half price as are the occasional florist and bottle shop promotions.
I would not want to give papers away free in my shop, I think that would devalue them.
Would newsagents give them away if they paid half retail price? Once you start this discounting its expected all the time, a bit like customers expecting diaries and calendars to be half price too early.
newspapers are a break even thing at best here once you take out costs so they are of no “value” to my business as a stand alone department. You can get papers anywhere now and most people do not go out of their way to simply buy a papers, they are an add on or something people get as they walk past the door. I’d give papers away but only if they did not cost me anything.
From my experience I wouldn’t say they are an add on at all , they come in specifically for the paper and anything else you sell to them while they are in is the add on . Customers happily pay for the paper why give it to them for free .