The High Price of Poor Merchandising: A $125 Billion Loss
A recent industry report, The Cost of Poor Merchandising, revealed an eye-opening statistic — retailers across the United States lost a staggering $125 billion in sales over the past year due to poor merchandising practices. This loss represents a significant 3.3% of the entire retail market, highlighting just how impactful poor in-store merchandising can be on a business’s bottom line.
What are the key issues contributing to these losses? Hard-to-find products, cluttered displays, and disorganized shelves all play a part in frustrating shoppers and ultimately driving them away. The report also found that 33.3% of consumers reported frustration over hard-to-find products — a clear indicator that improving product accessibility is crucial to preventing sales losses and improving the shopping experience.
The Solution: Real-Time In-Store Audits with Infoquest by RDSolutions
At RDSolutions, we understand the critical role effective merchandising plays in retail success. That’s why we’ve developed Infoquest, a powerful tool designed to help brands conduct real-time, actionable in-store audits paired with tailored merchandising solutions. Infoquest empowers retailers to pinpoint and address common merchandising frustrations, such as disorganized displays and hard-to-find products, to optimize their retail environments and recapture lost sales. We’re your one-stop solution to not only identify the problems but resolve them quickly—today, not tomorrow.
Let’s take a closer look at how Infoquest can help solve these core merchandising problems:
1. Locate Hard-to-Find Products Efficiently
Shoppers are increasingly focused on product availability, and 33.3% of consumers have cited difficulty finding products as their number one frustration in stores. When products are hard to locate, customers are less likely to make a purchase, and the time spent searching can create a negative shopping experience.
How Infoquest Helps: Infoquest allows retailers to track product placement across all store locations in real-time. Whether a product is out of place or misstocked, Infoquest ensures that items are placed in the right location and are easy to find, helping customers quickly locate what they need and increasing the likelihood of making a purchase.
2. Fix Cluttered and Disorganized Displays
Messy and cluttered displays rank as the second most common frustration for shoppers. When shelves are disorganized, it not only affects the shopping experience but can also create a chaotic store environment that harms your brand perception.
How Infoquest Helps: Infoquest enables retailers to perform thorough audits of store displays. Our platform allows for real-time monitoring, so you can identify when displays are becoming messy or disorganized. With this insight, you can make immediate changes to ensure displays are neat, well-organized, and visually appealing to shoppers, improving their experience and increasing sales.
3. Enhance Product Accessibility Across All Retail Segments
Poor merchandising isn’t limited to one retail segment. In fact, mid-market retailers experienced the highest losses due to merchandising issues — losing a potential $54.1 billion last year. However, all retailers, from discount to luxury, suffer the consequences of poor product accessibility.
How Infoquest Helps: Infoquest’s customizable audits can be tailored to your specific retail segment, whether you’re operating in the luxury, mid-market, or discount space. For each segment, Infoquest provides the insights necessary to address specific merchandising challenges, like product accessibility or display organization, ensuring a seamless shopping experience for every customer.
4. Optimize Retail Performance with Real-Time Insights
Merchandising issues can be costly, and quick action is required to minimize their impact. However, manual tracking and delayed responses often lead to missed opportunities to correct problems before they escalate.
How Infoquest Helps: Infoquest provides real-time data that allows retailers to act quickly when issues arise. Whether it’s a missing product or a disorganized display, Infoquest delivers immediate insights into your store’s performance, allowing you to address merchandising problems quickly and effectively, reducing sales losses and boosting customer satisfaction.
5. Boost Customer Loyalty and Retention
Sales lost due to poor merchandising are not only financially damaging but also negatively impact customer loyalty. When shoppers are frustrated by cluttered displays or products that are hard to find, they’re less likely to return.
How Infoquest Helps: By providing real-time merchandising insights and solutions, Infoquest helps retailers improve their store environments and enhance the customer experience. By addressing these issues proactively, Infoquest helps build customer trust and loyalty, encouraging shoppers to return and increasing lifetime customer value.
Ready to Optimize Your Merchandising Strategy?
The impact of poor merchandising is clear — it’s costly and detrimental to customer loyalty. At RDSolutions, we’re committed to helping retailers like you fix these issues before they result in lost sales. Infoquest offers the tools and real-time insights necessary to audit your in-store environment, enhance product accessibility, and improve the shopping experience for your customers. We act as an extension of your brand. Our tailored merchandising solutions swiftly identify and address issues, ensuring your brand consistently wins at the shelf.
Ready to take control of your merchandising strategy and stop losing sales? Download our infographic to learn more about how Infoquest can help you drive sales, improve customer satisfaction, and stay ahead of the competition. Download now.
Source: The Cost of Poor Merchandising — CSP Daily News.
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