A method in the research phase of Service design is conducting interviews with the target group(s). Due to the short time period, I’ve tried to look for interviews online to gather information. What I wish to figure out is the perspective of the sellers and buyers. How is the experience for the sellers, do they enjoy their job? How do they sell? Are they comfortable and confident in what they are doing? Is it helping them earn money? And how is it for the buyers? Where and why did they buy the newspaper? Did they read it? How did they find the content? and so on.
In this blogpost I will focus on the sellers. I looked through a few Norwegian seller interviews I found on Erliks website as well as a couple of other global interviews from big issues websites and arab news. None of the interviews included the same questions. I copied the interviews into a document and marked “codes” of what I thought was important to the questions I would like to answer. After that I took the codes into post-its on FigJam and used affinity mapping to group the codes. The groups I created were location, time, sales tactic, magazine feedback, customer behaviour, selling difficulties, seller outcome, suggestions for improvements, and sellers experience with the service itself.
Let’s start with location, where the sellers would tend to locate themselves while selling. The sellers would choose strategic locations that are busy, such as metro stations, near a university, a touristy neighbourhood and shopping malls (Arab News, 2025; Skyrud, 2025a; Bu, 2025). Two of the people also spoke about their tactic in walking around instead of simply standing still, this was how one of them stood out (Arab News, 2025; Hetherington, Lu & Terzić, 2021). Another would stand in the middle of the crowd so that people had to pass by and would be unable to “ignore” them (Bu, 2025). When it comes to the time the sellers would sell, it wasn’t much mentioned in the interviews. One would say they sold when they needed the money (Bu, 2025). As the street newspaper service functions by letting the sellers choose where to sell and their working hours (INSP, n.d.).
Sales tactics were also quite often mentioned. Being kind and spreading a good mood through smiling and thanking and not letting your own irritations affect customers were mentioned (Arab News, 2025; Skyrud, 2025a, 2025b). One mentioned how he would let customers know that buying it is supporting them and the makers of the paper. The importance of not asking for more money or nagging the customers was also mentioned. As for the feedback of the magazine, one mentioned they would receive positive feedback and that people liked to read about the sellers of the magazine, but that some also buy it and seem to not read it. The same person also commented on how a magazine with a drawing on the frontpage sold really well and thought that people might like drawn frontpages.
As for the customer behaviour the sellers tend to experience, it seemed mostly positive, but some would experience poor behaviour (Bu, 2025; Skyrud, 2025). Two also talked about how they had put a mark on the area they were selling and how people would be well aware of who they are (Arab News, 2025; Hetherington, Lu & Terzić, 2021). Regular customers was also a point that was mentioned. As for difficulties when selling, one had a problem with people struggling with the digital payment method (Vipps) which seemed to cause stress as they seem to not have time to go through the payment method (Skyrud, 2025b). Another commented on the price that people should be able to afford it as it’s only the price of two coffees (Skyrud, 2025a). The interviewee from Paris had also experienced a big drop in sales over his long career as a newspaper seller (Arab News, 2025).
As for the sellers’ experience with the street newspaper service, one talked about how they were a mentor for new sellers and that the mentor program had great success (Bu, 2025). As a mentor they would teach new sellers how to sell the magazines, giving tips on small things such as how to hold it, or help with language. In one of the interviews one came with tips for improving the service as a whole by promoting the magazine more online – since that’s where the people are (Skyrud, 2025a). For sellers, getting a sense of dignity, interacting with others and doing something that helped them share their story with others were positive outcomes mentioned (Arab News, 2025; Bu, 2025; Hetherington, Lu & Terzić, 2021).
What could we take with us from these interviews? Well it seems as though figuring out how and where the sellers should position themselves for best sales could be interesting to look at, for example they tend to place themselves in busy areas, while one mentioned that they felt like customers were in a rush and did not feel like they had time to figure out the payment method. The payment process is also important, as people tend to carry less cash, other payment methods might be more time-consuming or impractical for street newspaper sales. Further we have the design of the magazine and its content itself. Some people like reading the stories of the sellers in the magazine, while people seem to buy it to support, yet they do not seem to read the magazine. Then there is the aspect of the design of the magazine itself if that could help start a talking point or promote sales. Which leads to the marketing of the magazines and its exposure online in order to promote more sales and open up another channel to support and communicate.
References
- Hetherington, A., Lu, Y. & Terzić, M.. (2021, October 15). Meet the people selling street papers around the world. Big Issue. https://www.bigissue.com/life/meet-the-people-selling-street-papers-around-the-world/
- Arab News (2025, October 2). Meet Ali Akbar, the last newspaper hawker in Paris. Arab News. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2617498/media
- Skyrud, E. (2025a, Juni 12) I trappa: Reidar. Erlik. https://www.erlik.no/i-trappa-reidar-2/
- Bu, K. (2025, March 7). Fikk tilibake kontrollen. Erlik. https://www.erlik.no/fikk-tilbake-kontrollen/
- Skyrud, E. (2025b, March 7) I trappa: Nicolae. Erlik. https://www.erlik.no/i-trappa-nicolae/
- International network of street papers (INSP) (n.d.). How street papers work. https://www.insp.ngo/what-is-a-street-paper/how-street-papers-work
