I published this blog post here in July 2005. I think it’s relevant today as habit based shoppers remain important to our businesses.
While I talk about newspapers, card customers are, in the main, habit based shoppers, as are plenty of our other shoppers.
CONSUMER HABIT IS THE RISK NEWSAGENTS NEED TO ADDRESS TO BUILD NEWSPAPER AND OTHER SALES
The high number of newspapers and lottery products sold alone in newsagencies has been troubling me. Not only because of the risk to the newsagency retail channel in Australia if sales fall but also because of the lack of efficiency as a result of the traffic.
I have been looking for some research on why people buy newspapers but have had no luck so far. I’m guessing that the research has been undertaken by publishers and others for their own use and will not reach the public domain for that reason. My bet is that the purchase is as much or more about habit, like the morning coffee, than news content.
Looking at the way newspapers are promoted and the focus on competitions more so than news content suggests that it’s about habit. Competitions focus on maintaining and, hopefully, building habit. Content is not as important as the coupon or add on gift.
Lottery television commercials focus on habit. That and the fear of not having your ticket in when your numbers come up.
The risk for newsagencies is that they (we) are not part of the habit equation. Some of our products are but we are not. As consumers are able to satisfy their habit at more and more outlets it is reasonable to expect that the auto pilot will adjust and fewer will trek to the newsagency on auto pilot.
We need to promote ourselves as part of satisfying habit demand. The newsagency needs to provide the fix rather than the product. Promoting ourselves this way makes us more interesting to suppliers (current and prospective).
We can make the habit connect through competitions, as used by publishers and through emotional connect commercials, like independent grocers. My preference, however, would be that we find a way within our shops to collectively and universally across our channel make the habit connection and build on this to shore up current traffic and hopefully build more traffic moving forward.
Today, in 2022, I think there are other steps we can take to nurture habit. These include more diversity in what we sell and through a carefully celibately loyalty offer.
Our channel was built on offering what people wanted. They came to us for what we sold. We need to work harder and smarter at guiding people to what they ‘want’ and we need to do this around habit related opportunities.