Price investment not enough, say Woolworths suppliers
Catie Low May 9, 2016 The Age Woolworths’ $150 million investment in cutting prices, improving service and fixing its loyalty scheme will not be enough to stem the “leakage” of shoppers to Coles and Aldi, according to some of the chain’s important suppliers. One grocery supplier, who would talk only on an anonymous basis, said $150 million sounded like a lot of money but his business would spend hundreds of millions a year promoting its products in supermarkets and it was just one supplier. He said the $75 million, which is what Woolworths called out as the investment in reducing prices, was not going to be noticeable, “it’s such a small drop in the ocean”. “They’ve got more to do than just throw money at promotions. I would rather see the store presentation lift and staff undertaking restocking better,” the supplier said. He said their sales illustrated that traffic rates…
Read MoreAustralia’s reading habits: the good (and not-so-good) news
May 10 2016 Finding No. 6803 Topic: Press Release Country: Australia Source: Roy Morgan Single Source (Australia), Jan-Dec 2010 (n=18,817) and Jan-Dec 2015 (n=14,666); Roy Morgan Young Australians Survey, Jan-Dec 2010 (n=3,372) and Jan-Dec 2015 (n=2,906) In this digital day and age, where streaming TV, playing console games and social networking absorb so much of our leisure time, it’s only natural to question whether time spent on these activities might be impinging on our reading habits. Certainly, the latest findings from Roy Morgan Research confirm that the proportion of Aussies 14+ who read books is declining. But our data also shows cause for optimism, at least where children aged 6-13 years are concerned… Between January 2010 and December 2015, the proportion of Aussie kids aged 6-13 who agree with the statement ‘I enjoy reading’ has inched up from 73.7% to 74.5% (an increase of 140,000 kids). Girls are traditionally more…
Read MoreUncle Sam’s crackdown on e-cigs will make it harder to quit smoking
Rich Lowry May 9, 2016 Down through all the millennia that mankind has smoked tobacco, no one would have believed (or even imagined) that a battery-powered contraption with no tobacco would one day be considered a tobacco product. We’ve long had smokeless tobacco; now we have tobacco-less tobacco. This conceptual breakthrough is the work of federal bureaucrats who are bringing the regulatory hammer down on e-cigarettes in a misbegotten extension of the war on smoking. The Food and Drug Administration has issued new rules so onerous that they will likely suppress the manufacture of e-cigarettes and kill off small companies making them. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell hailed the action as “an important step in the fight for a tobacco-free generation” — never mind, of course, that e-cigarettes are tobacco-free. The problem that regulators and so-called public-health advocates have with e-cigarettes is that, unlike nicotine gum or patches…
Read MoreE-Cigarettes Are Safer, but Not Exactly Safe
Aaron E. Carroll MAY 10, 2016 THE NEW HEALTH CARE People get hooked on cigarettes, and enjoy them for that matter, because of the nicotine buzz. The nicotine doesn’t give them cancer and lung disease, though. It’s the tar and other chemicals that do the real harm. A robust debate is going on among public health officials over whether electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, can alleviate the harms of smoking tobacco, or whether they should be treated as negatively as conventional cigarettes. In other countries, such as Britain, officials are more in favor of e-cigarettes, encouraging smokers to switch from conventional to electronic. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration issued new rules on e-cigarettes, banning their sale to anyone under 18 and requiring that adults under the age of 26 show a photo identification to buy them. Electronic cigarettes carry the promise of delivering the nicotine without the dangerous additives.…
Read MorePush to up Tasmanian smoking age
MAY 11, 2016 AAP In a crackdown on young puffers, the Tasmanian government is suggesting raising the legal smoking age to 21 or 25. An analysis of smoking rates released on Wednesday indicates while smoking is decreasing overall in Tasmania, there is an “alarming increase” in smoking among Tasmanians under 24. A government spokeswoman says they are consulting the public and health professionals to see if raising the legal age will reduce the incidence of “newly legal smokers” supplying cigarettes to their underage peers.
Read MoreRoy Morgan Magazine Readership March 2016
May 05 2016 Finding No. 6795 Topic: Press Release Readership Country: Australia Roy Morgan Research today releases the latest Australian Magazine Print Readership results for the year to March 2016. The multi-media brand Better Homes and Gardens remains the country’s most-read paid-for magazine (down just 0.4% to 1,818,000). Not far behind, Australian Women’s Weekly is not only the most popular Mass Women’s magazine, but was the best performer of the group (down just 1.5% to 1,713,000). Overall readership performance was strongest in the Food and Wine category (up 11.3% to 5,260,000). Although dominated by the two heavy-hitting supermarket titles—3,216,000 Australians read the average issue of Coles Magazine (up 26.5% compared with the year to March 2015), and 2,877,000 read Woolworth’s Fresh (up 16.3%)—others in the category scored solid gains, including Taste.com.au Magazine (up 23.8% to 530,000), Selector (up 47.1% to 100,000), and Gourmet Traveller Wine (up 5.6% to 94,000). However,…
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