Assortment Planning in Retail

In recent years, customer needs and retailer expectations have grown faster than ever. Therefore, you need a sound assortment planning or retail planning strategy to provide the best customer experience and achieve your sales goals.

When a store optimizes advertising strategies, store layout, and promotional strategies for the maximum conversions, it is said to be doing assortment planning. Planning for product availability is done on a periodic basis, whether it be daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or in a different approach.

What is Assortment Planning in Retail

The act of identifying the commodities retail desires to sell during a fixed timeframe to increase profitability is known as assortment planning in the retail sector. In other circumstances, it means that retailers choose the items they should buy expensive and promote them to their customers. It all comes down to having the appropriate products at the correct time and location.

A retailer’s capacity to provide a wide selection of goods has a significant impact on customer satisfaction. If the products they want are out of stock or if the color they wish is not provided, your consumers can be disappointed. They will consequently visit your opponent’s store instead.

It is crucial to understand that displaying all of your products at your store would be impractical due to the increase in operational costs. So, to eliminate costs while maximizing profit, you should optimize the selection and give designing your retail strategy first attention.

The assortment planning process in retail

Are you confused about the assortment planning process? How and where to start? Let’s explore this completely,

Make a strategy based on a study

 You must first evaluate the previous sales performance of each subsidiary and retailer before developing an assortment strategy or plan, and then you must determine the most recent trends.

 You will research the necessary components, like value, typical selling price, and batch longevity, to mention only some. Marketers can create a strategy based on facts and relevant materials.

Grouping of stores

 The technique of combining stores with comparable characteristics, such as locality, earnings, retail space, buying behavior, marketing materials, and so on, is known as “Store grouping”.

 You may then apply a comparable assortment strategy to stores that are part of the same group. Additionally, by performing this step, you may personalize your product selections and marketing strategies to better serve your consumers.

Determine the range and volume of assortments

 Stores must choose whether products will be supplied in each group. The Product range is the variety of categories, whereas product richness is the diversity of designs and products inside a given theme. For maximum customer appeal, it’s crucial to achieve a balance between breadth and depth

Design a realistic marketing strategy

 In this strategy, things are displayed using the most pleasing manner possible. This makes you consider the items that are positioned in the middle of the store and the choices that are closely located to the service counter.

 Remember that the goal of visual merchandising is to encourage customers to buy by emphasizing the advantages of each product. Once more, you should personalize your plan for various retailers and refine it in light of historical data.

Benefits of Assortment Planning in Retail

Keep your clients engaged

Rather than speculating, you are evaluating the past demand activity of each store and creating a plan in accordance. As they may have purchased comparable things last year and presume that you are still carrying them this year, your devoted consumers will be able to find what they’re looking for in your business in this manner.

Budget your stock items

Once you thoroughly prepare your marketing plan, you will have an accurate estimation of the assortment required. Thus, retailers will end up spending the inventory under budget and won’t go overboard. As an outcome, we will cut back on wasteful spending and inventory costs. Due to careful planning, you can avoid reallocating items and getting rid of unnecessary inventory.

Distance yourself from your opponents

When you have a sound assortment plan, you can identify the most popular items and stock your shelves with them. You can outperform your rivals and maximize the number of visitors if you can introduce the current trend first.