Consumers pay more attention to circulars than other advertising

Two reports highlight the growing importance of in-store marketing. The first (noted by Progressive Grocer) was released by Vertis Communications two weeks ago and noted that, "47 percent of Americans cited inserts and circulars as the most effective, a 9 percent increase since 2003. Also according to the report, inserts and circulars have surpassed TV advertising as the medium most able to draw consumer attention." Further, "Forty-three percent of those surveyed said TV advertising interested them the most, but that was a 10 percent decline from five years ago. Meanwhile, 38 percent of respondents thought newspaper advertising best grabbed their attention, down from 45 percent in 2003."

Helping to confirm those results are new findings from BIGresearch that also point to the increasing importance of marketing at retail. Across all demographic groups, 27.4% of those surveyed said in-store promotions influenced their decisions, up 0.5% from last year. That compares favorably to TV/Broadcast at 27.9%, though still ranks behind traditional forms of retail promotion like newspaper inserts (30.5%) and word of moutn (42.6%). Of course, the influence of newspaper inserts have also been falling steadily the last few years, and plunged -4.5% last year lone (the influence of word of mouth promotion remained steady).

Tags: retail marketing, in-store advertising