News

Study: In-store merchandising is broken

July 17, 2013

In a study by RIS News and RBM Technologies, in-store merchandising practices were deemed broken or outdated for a majority of national and regional retail chains.

The report also found that the bulk of the retailing industry is doing workarounds when they create merchandising plans and forecasts, working with historical and aggregated averages and using guesswork instead of hard numbers.

"After surveying and speaking with these retailers, and learning more about their current practices, it became clear that in-store merchandising is a very broken process," said Joe Skorupa, RIS News editor-in-chief. "Too many retailers are still relying on spreadsheets when they really need a comprehensive solution for managing their in-store merchandising campaigns and measuring execution."

Key findings from the report include:

• A quarter of retailers have up-to-date store surveys, yet only 3.7 percent say they have accurate planogram knowledge down to the fixture level for all of their stores.
• A major part of the problem is that 63 percent of retailers are still using Excel spreadsheets for in-store merchandise planning, communication and compliance.
• A quarter of retailers do not measure store execution and compliance regularly. Only 7.4 percent say they only measure it one to two times a year and a much larger group of retailers — nearly 20 percent — say they never do it.

"Retailers have lost confidence in their stores' ability to execute localized campaigns quickly and effectively," said RBM's Chief Operating Officer Dan Wittner. "Retail executives need access to real-time information in order to carry out directives from headquarters. This level of compliance ensures that every customer walking into their stores — regardless of store location — is seeing the right marketing messages and the right merchandise, exactly how it was envisioned to be placed within the store in order to create the optimal customer experience."

Read more about merchandising.