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Not so much cigarettes and alcohol more a case of soft drinks and mags
Thu 16 Feb 2006

New analysis from the marketing services and consultancy company, dunnhumby, into the TV Listings and Women’s Weeklies markets has revealed that almost two thirds of customers will pick up a soft drink with their magazine (58% Women’s Weeklies, 63% TV Listings). Almost half of us (46%) also settle down for a read munching a yoghurt or dairy dessert – the most popular brand being Muller Fruit Corner. Unsurprisingly, therefore most purchases of both types of magazine were found to occur during the lunch hour.

Fig 1: Basket analysis - TV listing magazines

Fig 2: Basket analysis - Women’s Weeklies

Repeat Purchasing

TV Listing titles have a strong repeat purchase pull with almost a third of readers buying 6 or more copies over a 26 week period. TV Times has the strongest repeat purchase rate with 53% of customers buying 6 copies or more.

Within the Women’s Weeklies market, almost a quarter (21%) of customers buy six copies or more. Take a Break was found to have the highest repeat purchase at 30%.

Fig 3: Repeat purchase of both TV Listing magazines and Women’s Weeklies

Day of Week Purchase

Whilst most magazines are purchased the day they hit the shelves, of particular note are TV Easy and TV Quick, which tend to be bought on Friday. However, both are published on Tuesday.

Fig 4: Women’s Weeklies by day of the week

Fig 5: TV Listing by day of the week

Comments Martin Hayward, Director of Consumer Futures and Strategies, dunnhumby:

“This new generation of marketing information, bringing together consumer behaviours and media habits in a directly connected way, is so valuable for advertisers and publishers, For example, knowing what customers purchase with their magazines means that marketing promotions can be based on real, hard data rather than mere supposition. Customers are buying magazines at lunchtime with yoghurt and soft drinks therefore perhaps weekly magazines should be part of a meal deal?

This data shows actual customer behaviour – it’s this stuff that publishers and advertisers must base all their decisions upon no matter how entrenched certain ideas about their target market might be.”