If you are a retailer, the shelf space of your store must be a valuable asset.
Retailers use shelf space for multiple purposes: placing products, enhancing visibility & display, allowing an easy comparison among the products, placing brochure holders, to distribute important printed marketing materials etc.
You need to manage shelf space efficiently to attract more customers and to optimize your profit and revenue. Your shelf space is a limited, scarce and fixed resource. If potential products continuously get added to your shelf, then you have to take this decision wisely.
A recent marketing research piece has proved that the in-store factors – including shelf space – play an influential role whenever a customer makes a choice to buy a product.
If you're among those retailers who think that this process is quite complicated, you have to know that the shelf space allocation process is pretty easy if you just follow some simple things.
Considering these below-mentioned five factors, it will not only provide you a useful shelf space allocation for your small retail store but will also enhance your overall profit.
Outlet locations: You can't ignore the impact of the location - where your retail store is situated - and the competition intensity of your store's trade area. Indirectly or directly, all these aspects can affect the space elasticity.
The diversity of products: The space allocation and diversity of the products in your retail store surely give a strong influence on your consumer's behavior. Hence it drives more sales with a stimulating interest in cross-selling and buying.
Pricing: Obviously, the pricing of the products plays a vital role in maintaining an efficient shelf space allocation in your retail store. Accurate pricing of the products has the greatest positive effect of boosting your retail outlet sales. Being a retailer, you can boost up the product sales by reducing cost through an appropriate management of products in the shelves.
Advertising and promotion: In a small retail store, you may have limited space on the display shelf as well as in the inventory space. Thus, you should arrange the products based on their demands and popularity.
Store design and display: Your store design and shelf displays enhance the sales of a brand. You should allocate and display all your products on the shelf space in such a way that it entices and attracts more buyers.
Product allocation, product price, and product assortment have a meaningful influence on a customer's buying behavior. With the limitation of shelf space, you must select – and allocate – the products on shelf space optimally to maximize your profit.
Read more about optimizing facings on the shelf of a retail store here.