Big Box Retail & Malls
In-store retail product placement is crucial to the success of any business. With hundreds of different brands competing for attention and recognition, shelf space is at a premium. The competition between new brands and established ones for this limited space is fierce.
Product placement in stores and your layout strategy can have a major influence on a customer’s decision to buy your product. Understanding where to place items within your store can be the difference between selling a few units and selling a couple hundred units.
What is Retail Product Placement?
Retail product placement is the art of deciding where your products appear within a retail space through planning, design and negotiation. Display placement also involves spatial analysis of shelving and the use of planograms. These are visual diagrams of product shelving to help merchandisers maximize capacity.
When in-store displays are effectively placed, brands are recognized much more easily, and sales are maximized. It’s the best of both worlds. Stores need to consider where the majority of the foot traffic is in the store, the size of the store and what other items are being sold within that particular category when trying to optimize display placements.
Also, product placement in retail stores consists of strategies implemented by field marketing and sales teams. This could include organizing and tracking placed products and restocking empty shelves.
Retail in-Store Display Placement
For retail stores, charging for space, charging to remain in that space, and charging to limit competitor shelf space are much more advantageous for larger well-known brands. With new brands, fighting for prime real estate on store shelves can be challenging. For new products to avoid failure, they must:
- Co-brand their display
- Target a failing competitive brand
- Know their unique prime shelf real estate
- Consider the broker option
- Build clout
- Fight for eye-level placement
Analytics Rule All
Even though earlier in this article we said retail product placement was an ”art,” there should be no guesswork to it. Using insights gleaned from detailed data and analytics can ensure your displays are placed in the most optimized positions. It’s great to feel confident about your product placement plan, but the only sure way to guarantee success is through real-time data. Retailers should be collecting three types of data from their displays: observational, activity, and sales data. Observational data concerns the qualitative information your representatives are compiling from the field.
Activity data is the number of total store visits or actions taken in the store. Sales data is the quantitative data that tracks how much is being sold within a given period. Luckily for you, when you implement Mapsted technology into your property, we take the guesswork out of product placement in stores. Our platform provides the detailed analytics you need to quickly maximize your profit. Taking a data-driven approach to in-store product placement can help improve your bargaining power when negotiating shelf space with other brands.
Two Main Takeaways Here:
- Product placement in retail stores is the practice of placing products in the best spot possible to maximize sales
- Using real-time analytics to monitor the success of your retail product placement will guarantee you get a leg up on the competition
Start using detailed analytics today to upgrade your retail product placement strategy.
If you enjoyed this read, you might consider Beyond Bluetooth: The Next Frontier of Indoor Navigation or Mapsted vs. RFID: A Comparative Analysis of Asset Tracking Tags.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How can I combine location analytics with marketing?
A: To increase basket size you can set up a geofence that surrounds specific areas in your store. Essentially, a geofence is a virtual line that customers walk through or around, and it triggers a pre-determined action, such as sending a store promotion to the customer’s mobile phone.
Q: Why is wayfinding important in retail settings?
A: Imagine a story without any signs. How would you know where to go without aimlessly walking around to get your bearings? Wayfinding provides context and if done correctly can even help tell a brand story. Certain signage can also be placed strategically in “grab-and-go” areas to increase basket size.
Q: What are some ways I can create an optimal display?
A: Create a cohesive look. Group items that belong together to increase the likelihood of a sale. Another way to look professional is to stay on brand throughout the store. Use brand colors in a tasteful way, creating a story as the customer shops. Don’t overwhelm people with a display that is too crowded. Keep things organized and tidy to reduce feelings of uneasiness.
Q: How can I get started with location analytics for marketing?
A: Mapsted is a location-based technology company that specializes in indoor maps and navigation as well as location analytics and location marketing.
Q: What benefits can I expect from using location analytics?
A: A multitude of benefits includes but are not limited to space optimization, future planning, data-driven business decision-making, increased basket size, happy customers, and a safer and more efficient shopping experience.
