Retailers have been quietly running an experiment for the past few years. Cut the printed flyer. Push customers to the app. Save costs. Go green
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The results are in. And they're not what anyone hoped for.

A new peer-reviewed study from Tilburg University, University of Amsterdam, and UNC Chapel Hill tracked what happened when Lidl stopped delivering its printed store flyer to households in the Utrecht province — for a full year. The researchers used actual purchase data from 3,000+ households. Not surveys. Not intent. Real shopping behavior, week by week.

Shoppers made 8% fewer trips to Lidl. They spent 8.3% less. Both on promoted items and everything else. The competing discounter — the one that kept distributing its flyer — saw trips rise by 14% and revenues increase by 8.5%.

When Lidl reinstated the flyer twelve months later, most of the lost business came back. But the competitor kept its gains. Permanently.

The researchers' conclusion: retiring the print flyer may backfire financially, for the average retailer, even in a digital world.

A parallel study from IFH Media Analytics in Germany adds another layer. 78% of consumers regularly read printed promotional materials. And when companies worry that print signals environmental irresponsibility, the data says the opposite: 48% of consumers consider printed materials sustainable when produced from recycled paper. 35% feel the same when the paper comes from certified forests.

The problem isn't print. The problem is unverified assumptions about print.

What this means for our industry

For those of us in newspaper and commercial printing, the conversation often feels like we're defending a medium that the market has already moved past.

These studies suggest otherwise.

Print isn't holding on because of nostalgia. It holds on because it does something digital hasn't replicated: it arrives. It sits on the kitchen table. It doesn't require an intent to open an app. The researchers describe it as a shift from "push" to "pull" — and that distinction turns out to matter enormously.

Lidl's own data showed that households who downloaded the digital flyer after losing the print version still reduced their spending. They adopted the app out of necessity, not preference. And necessity-based adoption doesn't produce the same behavior as genuine engagement.

The operational side of the equation

There's a second story here that tends to get lost in the channel debate.

Printing and distributing a flyer at scale — week in, week out, with accurate promotions, correct pricing, regional variants, and tight production timelines — is a complex operation. The printers, MIS systems, and production workflows behind that process are what make it possible to deliver that physical reminder to millions of households reliably.

When that infrastructure is strong, it creates a real competitive advantage. When it's underinvested or poorly managed, the cost and error rate undermines the whole proposition.

The value of print doesn't just live in the reader's hands. It lives in the production operation that gets it there.

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Print isn't a legacy channel on its way out. It's a channel that requires evidence-based decisions — not assumptions borrowed from digital-first thinking.

The evidence is accumulating. It's worth reading.

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Sources: "Quo Vadis, Print Store Flyers?" — van Lin, Keller & Guyt, Tilburg University / UNC Chapel Hill / University of Amsterdam (2026). "Prospektmonitor 2025" — IFH Media Analytics.

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