Want to sell more at grocery checkouts? Stock lots of magazines

A study of store checkouts in the U.S. indicates strongly that magazines are an important part of the retail stores' product mix and sales.

Research firm Dechert-Hampe & Company found that magazines, confectionary and beverages make up the "power group" of checkout sales performers, accounting for some 81% of profits and 79% of sales. Retailers should devote at least 24% of their checkout space to magazines to maximize sales, it concluded.

The study was carried out over 6 months in 2008 in six, unnamed "leading retailers" who cooperated by providing barcode scanning and shopper card data. It was sponsored by Mars Inc., The Coca-Cola Company and Time-Warner Retails Sales & Marketing.

According to the results, magazine account for almost 25% of checkout dollar sales and the same for checkout profits.

The full study and an executive summary are available on the Magazine Publishers of America website.

(The results of the study are curiously at odds with developing industry practices. It says that more sales are made "over the belt" in regular checkouts, but fewer in self-checkouts; yet chains are moving aggressively to the latter. And a major retailer like Wal-Mart recently started moving magazine racks away from checkouts and towards the back of their stores and culling magazine titles to make their racks smaller.)