Tactics that sway newsstand buyers: To increase sales, you need to give the reader the sense that plunking down that $3 or $4 for your magazine is worth it

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Jan, 2002 by Geoff Van Dyke

At any given news rack you have maybe two to four seconds to persuade a shopper to stop and buy your magazine. One, two, three, four--that's it. And as the newsstand grows more and more overpopulated, it's easy to understand why publishers, desperate to get noticed, might turn to no-holds-barred covers that headline everything from crazy sex stories to scare tactics.

But now that even the most conservative titles lean toward the outrageous, publishers are considering what other elements and factors can help them pop on the mainline shelf. "There aren't many planned purchases on the newsstand," says Dan Capell, editor of Capell's Circulation Report. "Eighty percent of the reason to buy is impulse." So what helps influence that inspiration to buy? Could it be an extra-glossy cover stock? Bolder photography? A poly-bagged premium?

This is where perceived value enters the equation. Although difficult to measure, it is nonetheless integral to sales in today's newsstand environment--and to advertisers. Publishers are attempting to give the reader the sense that plunking down that $3 or $4 for a magazine is worth it. And elements such as paper quality, binding, trim size, issue size, premiums, added coverlines and price all factor in.

"We've done focus groups for a long time," says David Lee, corporate marketing director for F+W Publications. But the focus of those studies is shifting in response to the increasingly challenging newsstand climate, he says. "We've done a little more work in looking at the value proposition in the last couple of years."

SALES SLUMPS

As Lee notes, the newsstand environment gets tougher every day--wholesaler consolidation, two-tiered distribution systems and retail mergers make getting on newsstands increasingly difficult.

And the majority of titles already on retail racks have been watching sales slip for more than a decade. Sales totaling $4.6 billion on 1.8 billion units in 1999 were down 5.5 percent from the previous year, according to John Harrington, publisher of "The New Single Copy" newsletter. In the first half of 2000, unit sales were down 4.8 percent. In fact, there hasn't been an increase in unit sales since 1996, when unit sales rose 2 percent over 1995.

On the hunt for increased efficiencies, wholesalers are pushing to improve magazine sell-through numbers. And this has hurt sales even further. "Almost everyone's draws are lower than they used to be," says Harrington. "And their sales are lower than they used to be."

"You can drive efficiency by cutting the out-bound, but what you may do if you cut it too much is cut into the sales," says Eric Hayley, director of distribution for the Chicago-based Chas. Levy Circulating Co. "So we're trying to find the happy medium. I don't think anyone would disagree that magazines have been much over-distributed in certain accounts, and we're trying to find the right number to support sales and to support the merchandising look."

Under these harsher conditions, publishers, now more than ever, are searching for something to help them break out from the newsstand pack. "Anything we can do to increase that perceived value, whether it's a polybag or promoting a bigger issue, works to our advantage with consumers," says Richard Rhodes, vice president, retail marketing, for Weider.

Kathy Reilly, a Milwaukee-based production consultant, says that publishers often invest more money in materials for newsstand issues to set their magazines apart. Some magazines, for instance, will use a lighter grade of paper for subscriber copies than they use on the newsstand, she says. "Same thing on the covers. They may use a 65-pound cover on their subscriber copies and an 80- or 100-pound cover on their newsstand copies. And again, it's because of the perceived value--the appearance of the magazine on the newsstand."

Richard Alleger, vice president, Rodale, says that company research has shown that "some magazines benefit from the materials on which they print." But, adds Alleger, paper quality is secondary to editorial concerns: "The greatest paper in the world can't overcome poor editorial."

Martha Stewart Living has conducted focus groups on paper quality and on the magazine's size, but the company hasn't specifically researched the effects of binding or trim size on newsstand buyers, according to Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia president of publishing Lauren Stanich. "We always plan to do a certain amount of research each year on our existing magazine to make sure that we know how customers' views of the magazine change over time, how their needs change," says Stanich. But measuring the ROI when it comes to this kind of research is not easy. "I don't know that it's directly measurable," she says.

Focus groups, on the other hand, convinced F+W's Lee that improving the paper stock for one of his titles, Writer's Digest, was essential. Historically, it's been printed on coated groundwood and was black and white, says Lee. "We upgraded its paper stock and went to two-color inside the book to try to increase the sense of perceived value."