The industry standard for Digital Shelf Analytics data is to monitor retailers only in their top locations. However, as our latest research shows, there are, on average, 2.5 times more out-of-stock opportunities to be discovered if monitoring were conducted across all retailers' locations.
Monitoring just one or a few locations is like seeing the world through pink glasses - everything may seem perfect, but considering all locations could lead to a potential 32% boost in business opportunities. Why so much? Product availability belongs to key Perfect Store KPIs as it translates nearly directly to sales. Therefore, addressing gaps in availability brings tangible results and is usually the top priority for e-commerce teams.
The “pink-glasses effect” varies per retailer. The effect was the most intensive in asda.com, metro.de, rewe.de, carrefour (fr and es), tesco.com, and morrisons.com where brands could expect even 3-4x more out-off-stock opportunities vs those visible only in central locations. On the flip side, there are e-retailers such as target.com, kroger.com, mediamarkt.de and waitrose.com where the difference in product availability between “all locations average” and “only central locations” was almost ignorable.
How do we calculate the Pink Glasses Effect? It is a ratio of the Average Out-of-stock from all locations to the Average Out-of-stock from the TOP 10 best-stocked locations.
Please note that this research is representative, although it was conducted on 8 billion data points from 3 categories and 150 000 unique SKUs gathered from 30 000 unique store locations. The final outcome will be different for your category.
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