Photo: iStock | monticelllo
Should Print Circulars Stay or Go?
We live in a digital age where information can be found in devices held in the palms of hands. Isn’t it time for print circulars to go? Kroger says, “Heck, yes!” Giant Eagle said “Yes” before it later said, “Oh no!”
Kroger is phasing out its print inserts in newspapers and mailed to homes in favor of digital alternatives. The company has said that the cost associated with printed circulars and declining newspaper circulation has prompted the switch. The grocery giant recommends that its customers download its app or go to kroger.com to access weekly deals.
The company isn’t completely turning its back on the circular. A Kroger spokesperson in Michigan told the Detroit Free Press that customers who prefer to receive circulars at home can call an 800 number to continue receiving them. A print version of the flier will still be available for pickup inside stores for those who like to shop the old-school way.
Giant Eagle was ahead of Kroger in getting rid of its print mailer. The regional grocery chain earlier this year phased out sending circulars to its customers in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
A QR code was included in a circular from the chain for customers to create digital accounts to receive weekly deals. The grocery also made the e-flier available through its website and app. Those customers who preferred print could pick up a copy in one of the chain’s stores.
Giant Eagle’s phaseout, however, did not go according to plan. The grocer’s interim CEO Bill Artman told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that customers complained and the decision was made to bring the circulars back.
The first revived circulars drop this week and will be used to promote Giant Eagle’s “Price Lock” promotion on 800 items at lower prices with a pledge to keep the discounts in place through Aug. 9.
The decision to transition to digital from print circulars and coupons has been criticized for limiting older and lower-income consumers’ access to deals.
Pew Research Center research from 2021 found that 39 percent of Americans over 65 do not own a smartphone and 25 percent do not use the internet. Pew, also in 2021, found 24 percent of adults with household incomes below $30,000 don’t own a smartphone and 41 percent don’t have a computer.
Discussion Questions
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: What are the proper roles for print and digital flyers to play in retail marketing ops today? Do you expect more chains that have ditched print for digital will reverse course like Giant Eagle?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Dion Kenney
COO, Mondofora
Jenn McMillen
Chief Accelerant at Incendio & Forbes Contributing Writer
We receive so many print circulars in our mailbox and all of them get dumped in the trash without us even looking at them. We don’t have the time or inclination to sift through the physical equivalent of spam. However not everyone is like our household — some still love coupon clipping and looking for bargains in circulars. These mixed views are an issue as print circulation comes with a cost attached, even if the recipient is completely uninterested. Digital is much cheaper and I suspect more companies will move in this direction, especially as all generations become more tech savvy.
The salient point here, Neil, is “not everyone is like our household.” There are many households in the U.S. in which at least one member enjoys looking at, turning the pages of, and even purchasing something from the flier. On the other side you have the ecological impact and recycling. And on the third side, that is how we start the fireplace between fall and spring. What would we do without the fliers?
Neil, I think you are absolutely correct. Some people still love the flyers. My question is, of those four or eight pages, how many coupons or items are actually acted upon? Is the flyer a shopping tool or simply entertainment?
I agree that most people just throw fliers away. However as Bob and Gene pointed out, some people still like fliers. Discontinuing all fliers may not be the best approach. Ideally, grocers could keep fliers on a limited basis and only send them to those customers that request them.
Retailers need to understand their customers and determine how or if print flyers should be used. There is no question that paper flyers are being phased out for good reasons — cost, ineffective, environment, etc. — however, as noted in the article, not all customers have digital access. Ultimately, this is a retailer specific question. Retailers should continue to use print where they believe it makes sense, and there’s no need for an “all or nothing” approach. And for Giant Eagle – there’s nothing wrong with changing a decision that didn’t produce the right outcome.
It boils down to the age of your customer. Meet your shoppers where they are, not where you want them to go.
Is there a way to understand more about the customer by knowing which information channel (print, digital, etc.) they use? Providing different offers in different media can provide as much consumer insight as the price discrimination experiments do.
Having done this exact test many years ago and getting the same responses as Giant Eagle (and lost sales), we found that the paper circular is still something that people shop with when they come to the store regardless of age. Each retailer has to tailor how widely to distribute it (home-mailed or in-store) but the option needs to be available.
I also know several independents who have tested this, most deciding to keep circular distribution once they heard complaints, saw sales or customer counts dip.
A physical mailbox is just a spam folder for circulars. Except there’s no delete key or spam filters for this, just throwing them out without as much as a glance. Sure some shoppers still respond to circulars, but I’d be amazed if there’s still any ROI in it for retailers. Retailers would save thousands, if not millions, by moving to an opt-in model similar to email subscriptions. In other words, printed circulars should be on-demand only. A QR code on the front or back of every circular would make this easy. This method seems to be the best way to communicate, as it is hard to get people to download yet another app. I guess the challenge is that circulars are bulk-mailed to “resident,” so some other solution is probably needed. In any case, circulars should go the way of six-inch-thick phone books. Sorry printers, but both ships have already sailed and this is long overdue.
The relevant word from Kroger is “phasing.” We as an industry and as a society will eventually be totally digital (ever see a book or other print publication in Star Trek?). It will take decades, but it will happen in iterative steps. Over the next few years, select demographics, geographies and store types will push faster into digital than others and that’s okay. Merchants need to remain mindful that shoppers are not all the same and, more importantly, fickle. Why risk getting an otherwise loyal shopper angry with you over a flier? That applies to both the coupon-obsessed and the environmentalist, between which retailers need to find balance.
Now if the industry could only hurry up and do something about printed receipts we’d be making real progress!
Agree – but I do recall a number of times where Captain Picard made a point of sitting down with an actual book & noting various ways the experience was different from reading on a screen: the tactility, the smell of the paper, the little ceremony of sitting down away from a desk with a cup of tea, the need to put other tasks aside to focus on the page. All the same reasons why we might consider print advertising today. The writers were spot-on 30 years ahead of our time!
There is still a role for them (Jenn says it best). I read them digitally, but I’ll also pick them up if I’m in-store — they are easier to refer to that way rather than getting back online. Not everyone does once-a-week shopping.
And data often shows a majority of people shop 2-3x per week, so that’s a good option!
Print and digital fliers drive product discovery and direct shoppers to timely deals. The shift to digital fliers aligns with evolving media habits, sustainability goals and measurable data.
Kroger’s data mastery suggests it knows most shoppers will accept this decision to evolve beyond paper.
Pew Research is an “A” regarded polling organization. Still I question the results of the referenced poll. It is a “wow” to me. I confidently say that all my contemporaries in their eighth decade own smartphones and use the internet. I assume that Pew is correct.
As for fliers–what took them so long? Living in an apartment building, one gets to see the habits of many dwellers. My observation of the recycle bin in the mailroom is that the fliers go straight from the mailbox to the bin. Often, fliers are dropped off in the mailroom. The stack remains for a week and then is cleared out by maintenance. That same recycle bin bulges with catalogs.
From a business point of view, it strikes me as a waste of money. From an environmental point of view, it is a massive insult.
This is about demographics and math. For some demographics, the math still works. Over time, I suspect we will age out of the math working for paper fliers. Meaning, I still occasionally respond to paper fliers after ignoring the blizzard of electronic pings I get — but I suspect my kids are the opposite.
Here’s the thing about fliers (aka FSIs). The person (whether they’re older or younger) who opens the circular and reads it wants the information–is looking for items to buy. They’re making a decided effort to absorb what the retailer wants to tell them. I’ve tested circulars and watched (via eye tracking) how consumers examine them. Placement, size and choice of language, e.g., “sale,” “discount,” “BOGO,” etc. make a difference as does the actual price. Knowing when 25 cents off vs $1 less can make a difference offers retailers the ability to focus on what will influence more sales. Of course there’s a place, even a need, for digital fliers, but how they’re read or glanced at or ignored has yet to be determined. Hence how to maximize their effectiveness remains an open question.
Back in my day (the 1970s), a coupon in an FSI would redeem over 7 percent. Some would go as high as 10 percent. More valuable than that were the displays the retailers would stack to support it. Today an FSI coupon redemption is high at 1.1 percent, and the retailer says “ho-hum.”
That comparison is a big part of the answer.
Not everyone is a digital native and so retailers must be smart about their channel investment strategies. Leveraging advanced math to understand consumer behavior is critically important to maximizing marketing spend on the quantity and type of circulars that deliver results.
The weekly ad is a combination effort between vendors and retailers with two primary objectives:
Item sales/basket size: The ad communicates vendor-funded discounts to promote specific items;
Store visits: Retailers consolidate the item ads into a complete ad to encourage customers to visit their stores.
Eliminating print distribution primarily affects the retailer’s goal of driving visits. Typically, the printed flyers are still made available at the store, so vendors still get the promotional benefit for their items and customers still get the handy guide for how to save while at the store.
So the real downside is the risk of declining store visits and losing some of those customers that used the print ad to choose where to shop. That’s where digital needs to fill the void and reach customers in their homes with motivating offers.
As with any major strategic change, the development of a true test to measure the impact of circular vs. no circular/print vs. digital in targeted markets could provide real metrics to assess the impact on sales. Size, content, and frequency should be part of those tests. No need for the all-or-nothing approach when the ability to make an informed decision is available. People have preferences and they aren’t all age related.
Going all-digital is inevitable. I assume the complaining customers are older, and used to print offers. As this group “passes” print circulars will go with it. There are other market forces at play here as well–regional newspapers are going away and, regardless of my nostalgia for reading a paper, this delivery mechanism is on life support. Which leaves the good old postal service or distribution at the store as options, and the postal service is not exactly a vibrant operation either!
Unfortunately the circular is going the way of the daily paper. Progress (?!). However it IS important to be able to interact with and reach the market segment that does not have access to — or does not want to utilize — digital options. I think the ability to call an 800 number and be placed on a list to receive a circular is a really nice service option! Having the circulars available at the front of the stores is probably the best way to help customers that are not able to utilize digital. I do think that “digital only” coupons will continue to be a problem for customer segments — but that is another discussion.
I would offer an alternate option: target the mailer to people who redeem the offers and stop mailing to those who don’t redeem them. In addition to people without smartphones/access to apps, there are still lots of people (see Giant Eagle) who prefer to browse via the flier. Both groups seek out the fliers and peruse them with intent. These are shoppers with very high conversion potential.
Print and digital both have their place in consumers’ lives. There is a trend now with digitally native DTC brands creating print catalogues and mailing them to their customers. These catalogs are expensive and luxurious to produce and produce meaningful conversions for the brand on their websites not just of the featured products, but of other products customers find browsing their site. So the question is, does this experience translate to the traditional grocery brand promotional flyer?
The answer has two important factors — customer demographics and regional location. If you’re targeting younger, urban customers, those flyers are likely going straight into the trash or recycle bin. Targeting an older, suburban or more rural demographic, or perhaps customers not on either the east or west coastline? There is a good bet that at least some of them will use those paper fliers!
Grocers need to measure this and decide where, when, and which customers are still relying on those fliers. There is an element of tradition versus modernization comfort at play and grocery brands need to understand where their customers fit into this. Giant Eagle learned the hard way that their customers were not ready for the fully digital experience. And those DTC brands? They found that those catalogs need to be very luxurious to make an impact — cheap paper doesn’t make the cut! So perhaps that is yet another factor in determining the longevity of paper-based promotional materials!
Many shoppers don’t like the printed circulars that are mailed to them. But if grocers stop sending the circulars, shoppers complain and want them back. I know. It doesn’t make any sense.
I went with “somewhat more likely”, but there’s a catch: many more are likely to stop them, so there may still be a net decrease. And this may well be a good thing – for those that remain – since the whole point of advertising is to be seen, and the fewer someone is exposed to, the more each one can stand out.
It’s difficult to say exactly what the place of these long-popular objects should be; traditionally, of course, they were a mainstay of newspapers, but with the decline of print circulation, they’ve been moved to mail and/or digital delivery, neither of which I find to be (as) effective.
Ubiquitous chain grocers will have an easier time weaning off print circulars as most people within a trade area know about them, and they (like Kroger) are investing more heavily in digital options. They also spend more money on TV and radio to maintain that awareness.
For independents, print circulars play a key role in not only communicating specific product savings, but broad awareness reminders to everyone within a defined trade area – that they exist (some aren’t on the busy corner), they have many products on sale, and they do have brands people want. Until independents invest more in digital options and loyalty programs, print circulars will continue in some form.
Retailers who back out of circulars entirely are short-sighted. Digital options simply do not deliver the communication possible in a circular. Online options only offer value for those seeking specific products — circulars allow people to shop by looking at a range of things in order to be reminded of something they want to buy.
Unfortunately, I understand Kroger’s debate as there are fewer and fewer people receiving circulars. As with degradation of TV audiences, the loss of circulars have not been replaced by digital options.
Print circulars will eventually disappear completely, however, for the near term foreseeable future, in-store circulars still make some sense because not every customer uses a mobile phone for every purpose. Db www.biernbaum.com
It’s easy to say it’s time to go fully digital but it’s tough to remove a perk that is so important to some people.
We like to think that everyone is digitally up to speed but in reality we are not. The Pew Research study is eye-opening. Grocers cannot afford to leave these customers behind.
Interesting point: in over 45 years in department stores and independents, we have always found that print circulars delivered to customers wee read at least two times by the intended recipient and once by others in home.
This is an interesting point: as circulars diminish use, perhaps because they are packaged mainly in Sunday papers, that load is too much for customers to review. . However, circulars’ delivered to specific addresses are read more intensely.