CAMPAIGN PUSHES SALES OF MAGAZINES IN STORES

NEW YORK -- The magazine industry will begin a trade marketing campaign this month to promote single-copy magazine sales at supermarkets and large-format stores.

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The program, announced late last year and themed "Magazines Make Things Happen," is sponsored by the Magazine Publishers of America, the trade association of the consumer magazine business, and the Council for Periodical Distributors Associations, the association of wholesaler distributors of magazines in the United States and Canada. Both organizations are based in New York.

According to association statistics, 81% of U.S. households purchase magazines, and store sales have increased more than 50% in the last 10 years.

Supermarkets can benefit in merchandising magazines because they also promote in their pages other items sold in grocery stores. Magazines offer more than 16 billion store coupons, more than $2 billion in the advertising of grocery products and 26 billion editorial pages on food, nutrition, beauty and grooming products each year.

The program also emphasizes that magazines are a high-impulse category requiring no inventory investment, warehouse or fixturing costs. Magazines are fully returnable if they don't sell, and the racks are maintained by local suppliers.