Women’s Health has been a great success for us at the counter this past week. While we have had the magazine in four locations, 75% of copies sold were from this counter location. We pocket count so that we know where sales come from when we co-locate. While some of these may have been as result of the title being elsewhere, I suspect that most purchases have been on impulse on seeing the title on offer.
This is good to know. We will plan promotion of Women’s Health at the counter in the first week of on-sale for future issues.
Placement at the counter was made easier thanks to the counter unit we had from when the title first launched. We hoard these things and take good care of them for this use every so often.
There is an argument that brining title like this to the front of the shop reduces browsing. I think this would be true for some titles and in some store configurations. In our situation, I see many customers shop only the front 25% of the shop. Our co-location / counter strategies are about trying to build the efficiency for us of these shoppers.
We are careful in our selection of titles we place at the counter, near our newspaper stands and at the front of the shop. We support titles which are more likely to be purchased on impulse and or which have a compelling premium offer for this issue.