Buy discount gift card

Byline: LORRAINE CALVACCCA

Everybody wants a piece of the customer's mind. What better way to develop new products and sell existing ones than to canvas the source? Focus groups plumb readers' heads for favored content; advertisers want to know about ad recall. New research is getting increasingly personal about readers "relationships" with their magazines. "There are plenty of consumer studies," says Kevin Whelan, publisher of CircTrack Consumer Study 2003, "but most are focused on how to get more ad dollars or improve editorial." Now circulators may have their own window into the collective buyer's brain.

Released in September, the flagship study conducted by America's Research Group and sponsored by the Audit Bureau of Circulation surveyed 1,100 households in telephone interviews in June. It asked what motivates them at the newsstand, how price affects purchasing, their preferred renewal methods, where they like to buy single copies, their response to direct-mail, and their feelings about numerous other circulation tactics. The 130-page study, says Whelan, is designed to give circulators a macro view of consumers' buying habits. Plus, it includes a list of 12 strategic recommendations.

For example, when it comes to newsstand and subscribers, the survey confirms what circulators already know: People love a bargain. More than 65 percent of magazine subscribers stated that a price discount influences their decision to buy a magazine, and 97 percent of the survey sample expect to save money off the newsstand price when subscribing. Of that number, 70 percent expect to save between 11 percent and 50 percent, while 24 percent expect to save more than 50 percent. Moreover, 40.6 percent of consumers said a $5.00 increase in the annual subscription price would not influence their decision to renew.

"Respondents care less about what they're actually paying than how much the discount is," says Whelan. "What that means is that you can raise sub prices as long as you offer a big savings. So go ahead and raise your rates."

Other findings and recommendations:

Advertisers tend to think magazines in doctors' offices, airports, and places away from home are largely ignored and therefore worthless, says Whelan. "Yet our research proved that consumers do read them, and that they subsequently use the insert cards and subscribe." Four out of five respondents said they have read a magazine in a public place, and of the 30 percent who subscribed to a consumer magazine they first perused in a public place, 42 percent said they used a business reply card to do so. "Circulators should go to advertisers and build a case for public place copies being counted as circulation."

Pass-along figures may be the Rodney Dangerfields of circulation; they don't get much respect from advertisers. But Whelan says the survey shows that they should. Of the 53 percent who used an insert card, 41 percent used a card from someone else's copy. "If circulation is 100,000, but pass-along is 400,000, it's disregarded. But the use of insert cards establishes the validity of pass-along," says Whelan.

Gift subscriptions should be top-of-mind. In the last 12 months, 22.7 respondents gave a friend or relative a gift subscription to a consumer magazine. Of those respondents, 43.6 percent gave a sub as a birthday gift; 35.2 percent saw Christmas as the right occasion. "With more Americans giving gift subs because they don't know what else to give ... more marketing efforts should be devoted to encouraging consumers to give magazine subscriptions as gifts," the study recommends. (Price discount is a predominant motivator; 57 percent claimed that price discounts most influenced them to purchase a gift sub.)

Direct mail still prevails. While circulators worry snail mail offers may get lost in the shuffle, consumers notice them. More than one-third of respondents said they subscribed to a magazine after receiving such a solicitation. "That's an extremely high response compared to other products marketed through the mail," says Whelan.