Size of the UK market:

· 2,600 magazines are sold every minute of every day in the UK

· People in the UK spend around £2bn on magazines each year

· 80% of women regularly read a consumer magazine

· Consumer magazine sales have increased by 4.3% over the past 5 years and the average UK adult now purchases almost 30 magazines every year

(Periodical Publishers Association 2008)

If we asked you what attracts you to a particular magazine on the shelf, you might say ‘the front cover’. If you did, you’d be in agreement with around 75 percent of magazine consumers. The cover of a magazine has enormous influence on most purchasers’ buying decision – all but the most loyal of readers. It can be seen as an ‘advertisement’ for the issue’s content and most women’s mags share a generic layout – a model surrounded by the article headlines.

It is estimated that 60 percent of newsstand purchases are unplanned, and reports indicate that time spent selecting a magazine ranges from forty seconds grazing the newsstand, down to five seconds considering an individual title.

With an impulse buy like this, marketers only have a few critical seconds to appeal to the consumer’s subconscious, to evoke an interest in the magazine and successfully make a sale. Therefore, it is important for marketers to understand what is going on in the consumer’s head when they look at a cover and make their purchasing decision.

How eye tracking can help

Eye tracking offers an objective approach to understanding consumer behaviour. Eye movements can reveal hidden cognitive processes which can help understand and predict purchasing decisions.

To investigate front cover preferences, we conducted an eye tracking experiment using 30 female participants. They were asked to select a magazine they would purchase from eight available. We were particularly interested in researching the effect of two models on the front cover, instead of one and if it would influence the purchaser’s decision. The front covers of ‘Eve’ and ‘Good Housekeeping’ were Photoshopped to remove Patsy and Susannah from the original covers.

Which do you think got the most attention? Which got least?

Original (two model) and Photoshopped (one model) covers of Good Housekeeping and Eve magazines.

Heat maps display an aggregation of many individual’s viewing experience. Above, you can see that fixations are generally concentrated around the faces of the models/celebrities. Engaged people often make long fixations, and this is also in line with previous research on non-verbal communication e.g. eye contact indicates interest, attention and involvement. Interestingly, the actual text on the covers is not looked at very much.

96% of participants looked at the image of Davina alone compared to just 8% who looked at Patsy and Davina.

We can see that the image of Davina alone received more attention than the image of both Patsy and Davina (Eve), as demonstrated by the dense area of red. There were also longer fixations on the image of Davina, suggesting higher engagement and cognitive activity taking place here. Perhaps because Patsy and Davina are not normally regarded as a pair, less interest is taken in them.

Trinny and Susannah received more attention that Trinny by herself, because they are normally regarded as a pair. Trinny and Susannah received the most attention of all of the ten magazine covers we tested.

Celebrity parings work better when people believe there is a relationship between the pair – this is a technique Hollywood has been using to great effect for years!

Thanks for reading: http://twitter.com/modestrobert