HIM's Georgina Wild focuses on magazine shoppers and how to tempt them to buy more items

What do we know about the magazine shopper? Well, the first thing to understand is that most of the magazine shoppers in convenience stores are women.

They are most likely to be visiting a convenience store on a 'newsagent mission', buying newspapers and cigarettes. This is especially true of those shoppers buying monthly titles, but this is not always the case. One in three are actually on a top-up mission, such as buying milk and bread.

This is especially true of those shoppers buying weekly titles, but it's worth bearing in mind that as many as 14% of magazine shoppers are on a food-to-go mission, buying items for breakfast or lunch.

So we know magazine shoppers are buying other items (four on average), with the top purchases being newspapers, confectionery, milk, soft drinks, crisps and snacks. So how do we interrupt the shoppers in store to buy more magazines, more regularly? And how can we drive cross-fertilisation of magazines with these other items? One way is through parasite units with copies of the latest, best-selling magazines which could be positioned next to these other categories to tempt shoppers. Alternatively, pos material such as wobblers/talkers could be used to highlight magazines at these categories.

Habit has a big part to play when magazine shoppers choose their purchases. As many as 84% know the exact title of the magazine they will buy. When asked "Which factors influence your choice of magazine?" both weekly and monthly magazine convenience store shoppers tell us that they have always bought it, and for a third of purchasers it is the quality of content in the magazine.

For weekly magazines, it is more about what (or who) is on the front cover that will influence which title they will buy that's why it is important to display weekly magazines with their full front cover on show. For monthly magazines it is more about the free gift with the magazine that influences which title is selected.

And finally, availability is very important to magazine shoppers, as 45% say they would go without rather than swapping to another title.

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