Feature Highlight – Assortment

Monitoring an online store’s assortment will allow you to quickly obtain data on the products presented on the virtual shelves of retailers. You can use this information to make effective decisions when developing an assortment policy taking into account your competitors.

What’s an assortment ?

In e-commerce, assortment refers to the portfolio of products that a retailer or online store offers for sale.

A retailer’s assortment is an important factor in attracting and retaining customers, as consumers often prefer to shop at retailers that offer a wide selection of products to choose from.

Different retailers may represent different product tiers for a company, with allocated products for each retailer. Some may offer premium products, while others may offer more affordable options or more frequent discounts. Each retailer may also have a distinct consumer demographic. With this in mind, brands are able to plan their product offerings accordingly and ensure that the products they intend to sell in each retailer are indeed being sold.

It may also be important for brands to track the presence of their products in their lifecycle stages, such as during product launches or marketing campaigns for which the brand has invested money. Timing in these scenarios is crucial. 

What’s Brandquad ECI Assortment module ?

Brandquad’s assortment module is a valuable tool for retailers, brands, and online stores looking to optimise their product offerings. 

As part of our e-commerce intelligence solution, it enables regular, detailed analysis of the products availability across various channels. This helps users keep track of the proportion of products they are interested in, and make adjustments as needed. 

Additionally, the module allows users to compare their offerings with those of their competitors and identify opportunities for expansion into new markets.

What can you do with the Assortment module ?

• Consistently process and compare the assortment of goods by brand and store for a certain period of time.
• Evaluate the virtual shelf share of your products and competitive products, with detailed information on brands and stores.
• Analyse the assortment by key SKUs.
• Monitor products that appeared in a store or left a store assortment during the analysed period.
• Determine the ratio of the expected to the actual assortment in the context of online stores.
• Track changes of product statuses in a store assortment during the analysed period.
• Identify SKUs that are in the product list of stores but are not available on retailer websites.
• Check product list compliance on retailers websites
• The assortment module allows you to understand the market landscape and make strategic decisions for your business. By assessing the proportion of shelf space occupied by your products compared to those of your competitors, you can identify opportunities for expansion and areas where you can strengthen your position.

This module can as well help you identify issues with products that are being sold under the manufacturer’s brands but are not part of the company’s official product matrix. This is important as it allows you to address problems with products before they become a bigger issue and also to understand which products that are out of production are still being sold on the marketplace website.

Another use case could be if the product should already be on sale in the store and it’s not the case, this module can help you identify and solve the problem , like if the retailer has not posted it yet, or if there was an agreement on specific deadlines and see if those deadlines were respected or not.

What is the Assortment module important for?

The Assortment module is crucial for effective retail management. It allows retailers to carefully curate the mix of products they offer for sale, including determining which products to carry and in what quantities. 

In addition, it facilitates competitive analysis, enabling retailers to compare their assortment to their competitors. This includes monitoring which products and categories are most popular among competitors and identifying opportunities to differentiate. 

By regularly analysing this data, retailers can quickly take actions to minimise losses when competition increases and maximise profits when opportunities arise to gain a foothold in a niche market. In other words, Assortment module allow you to have a clear picture of what your competitors are doing, and make strategic decision to adapt and optimise your own product mix.

At the end, the assortment module helps retailers make data-driven decisions about their product offerings and improve their customer experience by offering a well-curated and relevant selection of products.

Book a demo of Brandquad’s solutions here and chat with one of our digital shelf experts!