by karen.johannesen -

A short survey on consumers experience and thoughts on Street Newspapers

Last week we looked at interviews from street magazine sellers, identifying their experience with selling the magazine, their habits, location and interactions. This week we will look at possible customer behaviours. In order to investigate this I created a survey that I spread on platforms such as discord and WhatsApp, and the survey was open for a time period of five days. The survey only had one demographic question (nation), and consisted of only multiple choice, but with the option of answering “other” where it was deemed natural.

The survey involved the following questions:

  • Where are you based/located?
  • Have you bought one or more Street newspapers where you are located?
  • (If yes)
    • Why did you buy it/them?
    • Where did you buy it/them?
    • Did you read the magazine(s)?
    • Did you enjoy its/their content?
      • (if yes) What did you enjoy about them?
  • (If no)
    • Why not?
    • Where do you mostly pass Street Newspaper sellers+
  • What would you like to see and read about in a Street Newspaper?
  • Does the design of the cover impact whether or not you consider buying a magazine? (any magazine)
  • Have you ever bought a magazine purely because of the cover? (any magazine)

Limitations

One limitation with the survey were the few demographic questions.

Results

There were a total of 13 submissions. The participants were located in Norway (n=6) and Austria (n=7). Out of the 13 submissions, only one participant had bought at least one Street Newspaper where they are located, this participant is currently located in Norway. The participant bought the magazine(s) due to two reasons; “I wanted to help/support” and “The seller was friendly”, but the participant did not read the magazine(s). The magazine(s) were bought “Outside the metro/trainstation/etc.”, “Outside a grocery store” and “On a busy street”.

As for the rest of the participants who have yet not bought a Street Newspaper, the number one reason was that “I am not interested in reading magazines” (n=6). Reasons number two were “Don’t know” (n=3) and “The magazines do not look interesting” (n=3). Following up is the answers “I never have time to stop” (n=2) and two replies to “Other” were that they had not noticed or been approached by a seller, “I am not sure who gets the money” (n=2), and “I felt annoyed” (n=2). Lastly we have “I am not sure what they will use the money on” (n=1), and one answer to “Other” being that they were scared by the people selling them “especially the drug addicts”. Most of these participants pass Street Newspaper sellers “Outside the metro/trainstation/etc.” (n=7) or “Outside a grocery store” (n=4). Others were “Outside a mall” (n=3), “On a busy street” (n=2), “Near a tourist attraction” (n=2), “outside of university” (n=1), and “Don’t remember” (n=2). 

Getting to the results of the participants’ thoughts we will first look at what they would like to see and read about. Most would like to read about “Art & Culture” (n=6), following up with “Hobbies” (n=4) and “Posters to rip out” (n=4). Others were “The people selling the magazines” (n=3), “Nature” (n=2), “News & Politics” (n=2), “All of the above” (n=2), “Sports” (n=1), and one participant said they “wouldn’t”. Nine of the participants said the design impacts whether or not they consider buying a magazine, while eight also said they have bought a magazine purely because of its cover.

Discussion

The results of the participant who bought the magazine aligns with some of what was said in one of the interviews that were discussed last week. This comes to show that some people do in fact buy magazines purely to support the seller, but do not actually read the magazines themselves. 

When it comes to participants’ reasons to not buy a Street Newspaper, the primary reason was that they were not interested in reading magazines. What the reason for this is is not clear, there could be many reasons, for example general uninterest or a reflection of the decline in reading for fun (Lee, 2025). Some weren’t sure who gets the money, which displays a general lack of knowledge about the Street Magazines. A few also mentioned some uncertainty about where the money would be spent or fear from the sellers, which could have a connection to the lack of knowledge discussed in previous blog posts that can be associated with homeless and drug users (Barse, 2017). Two participants also felt annoyed, which could be a result of sales tactics, or personal frustration. An interviewee from the previous blogpost mentioned the importance of not nagging the potential customers (Skyrud, 2025b). One interesting answer was that the magazine did not look interesting, assuming they did not take the time to do more than look at the cover. We could link this to the last two questions regarding the thoughts around magazine buying behaviour. Over half of the participants said the cover impacted their consideration of buying a magazine or directly made them purchase a magazine. In the previous blogpost it was also mentioned how one seller noticed a magazine with a hand drawn cover sold better than the others (Skyrud, 2025a). 

The participants of this survey would preferably like to read about art and culture in Street Newspapers, with hobbies following closely and some would also like some posters to rip out. Only three participants would like to read about the people who actually sell the magazines, which may differ from the experience of one of the interviewees in the previous blogpost who had received feedback that people enjoyed reading about the sellers of the magazine (Skyrud, 2025a). 

Most participants would pass Street Newspaper sellers outside of public transport, hotspots and grocery stores. These are typically crowded places or where there are a lot of passerbys, aligning with the different location tactics mentioned in the previous blogpost. 

In short, to conclude, there does not seem to be much interest in reading magazines and if they were to read one it would be preferred for it to be about arts and culture. We see some similar observations from the interviews from last week and this week’s survey. One example being that it seems like the design of the magazine itself could have an impact on the number of sales. This tells us that the part of the service that could be focused on is the design of the magazine itself. There also seems to be a little lack of awareness behind the lack of interest in buying, which could also possibly be improved by focusing on creating awareness of what the service is and who the sellers are through other communication channels.

References

by karen.johannesen -

Interview coding: The sellers view

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