Solving for the Core Requirements of an Effective In-Store Condition Measurement System
Last year a study sponsored by Procter & Gamble titled A Comprehensive Guide to Retail Out-of-Stock Reduction in The Fast Moving Consumer Goods Industry gave a number of prescriptions for solving out-of-stocks and other problems related to in-store conditions. The most insightful and important prescription was the call for a core requirement of “The development of an effective in-store conditions measurement system. One that is accessible, timely, inexpensive, reproducible and generally undistorted”.
The study went on to say that “without this core ability, it is impossible to determine progress, assign responsibility for tasks and maintain accountability for results”. No in-store measurement system in broad use today, meets these criteria. The systems used today revolve around two base technology approaches. The first is the syndicated, sample based reporting systems offered by syndicated data companies. These generally focus on product displays, but will gather New Item cut-ins, shelf location and other in-store conditions if requested. The second system used today is handheld collection of data by those charged with doing the merchandising work in-store. This self-reporting mechanism has obvious challenges including the cost (time, training, equipment) of gathering this self graded report card. These technologies have been around for years and the results they were built to affect remain problems stubbornly in place. The Procter Study, the ISI Share Group and the NARMS July 2008 study all concur that the systems used today are largely ineffective at solving the in-store merchandising conditions dilemma. The emergence of ShelfSnap brings promise for effective in-store conditions measurements. With ShelfSnap a user, any user, simply takes a digital photo of the shelf targeted and uploads the shots to ShelfSnap. The service uses a unique image recognition system to extract the appropriate information from the picture and report it to interested parties.
Panther Mountain Companies, LLC, which also is a founding partner of ShelfSnap, put together the following analysis of the two predominant techniques used today for in-store conditions measurements and then used the same criteria to evaluate ShelfSnap. Here are the results.
