PPA highlights critical importance of mail channel

PPA has highlighted the continued importance of the mail channel to publishers’ business models and future viability, as part of its response to the postal regulator’s Strategy Review. The findings of the review will help Postcomm frame its regulatory strategy in the lead up to 2010 and beyond.

In its response, PPA said that under a status quo scenario, continued overall growth in mail volumes was projected from the publishing sector. However, given the price sensitivity of magazine traffic it stressed that this growth was dependent on Postcomm ensuring that any changes, especially changes in pricing structures, were manageable for users both in terms of scale and timeframes.

PPA said it was supportive of Postcomm’s vision for achieving effective competition, of which the key elements will be customer choice, product development and innovation, and reducing the barriers to entry.

In its response PPA also took the opportunity to highlight publishers’ serious concerns about Royal Mail’s plans to introduce zonal pricing, indicating that it was likely to have a significant impact on publishers’ business models and could also significantly curtail the development of competition in the postal market.