If your retail stores run out of stock, you would not gain new customers for your retail business. As a retailer, you must provide them with the products they need. If you do not deliver what they require, you cannot entice them any longer. But as a retailer, you may encounter situations like changes in the market trend, consumer behavior, and their needs which you pose challenges in winning back customers.
Products that are not immediately available for customers to purchase can frustrate them and make them leave the store without any option. Sometimes, they will not find certain products they were expecting to buy from your store. During such times, they will behave in either of two ways: First, they will not mind and buy a substitute product. Secondly, they will walk away from your store since they do not want to purchase some other product. For instance, if a customer only purchases one brand of perfume, and you do not have any stock, they will not purchase another. They will find their favorite brand elsewhere to purchase. To reduce such stock outs, retailers use data-driven planograms for their stores to satisfy customers. Given below are the three main causes of stores being out of stock and ways to reduce them using a planogram.
When planograms are not built properly: If you do not use the correct retail data for your planogram, it causes stores to insufficient stocks. For instance, if you built a planogram for your main retail store and want to have store clustering with different provinces, you cannot use the same data for all your retail outlets. The primary reason for this is the change in buying habits and behavior of customers. Imagine you have certain items which are popular among shoppers, and it needs three shelves to fit the average days of supply. And you decide to provide half shelf space for such items by ignoring the days of supply. In such situations, there might be chances for out-of-stock that cause huge retail losses. To avoid such circumstances, consider sales data to determine how the product performed previously, and make sure to even out your days of supply.
When you have no proper inventory management: When it comes to retail inventory management, if retailers have no control over it, then it seriously causes out-of-stock. Also, if the space planning is not in sync with the inventory planning, it leads to major profit loss. To have better inventory control, make sure that your inventory management data is integrated. This prevents retailers from going out of stock and increasing sales.
Planograms help to design stores with the right inventory management, which reduces the chance of being out of stock. It also helps retailers in proper assortment planning by stocking the right products on store shelves, and this improves retail sales.
