Optimize Your Brand and Category Portfolio

Efficient assortment planning requires an understanding of the true value of an item to the category or brand franchise. ACNielsen Modeling & Analytics provides category and brand management solutions designed to help you evaluate the contribution of the products in your brand portfolio or category as a basis for assortment decisions.

Key Questions Addressed

• Which SKUs in your category or brand could be dropped without causing significant sales or profit loss?
• Which SKUs in your category or brand have distribution opportunities that would result in significant sales or profit gain?
• What are the predicted sales and profit impacts of a scenario in which you change distribution of any combination of SKUs in your category or brand?
  

Target Audience

Product Assortment benefits all levels of the sales and marketing organization.

• Primary audience: brand management, category management, retail merchandising and sales management.
• Brand Management Applications: Understand which products are most important to satisfying consumers’ purchase needs. Pinpoint products that are most incremental to the brand franchise in order to identify opportunities for distribution drives or elimination of items.
• Sales/Category Management Applications: Credibly demonstrate and share information with retail partners regarding the value of improved assortment and the benefit of specific list/de-list recommendations. Determine the product mix most attractive to trading partners and demonstrate improved assortment benefits at specific trading partners.
• Retail Management Applications: Evaluate store assortment and distribution scenarios to strategically and profitably manage limited retail space. Results can be imported into Product Planner and Spaceman® to drive retail planograms.

Key Benefits

• Determine item cannibalization and incremental volume to brand and/or category.
• Integrate Assortment recommendations with Product Planner and Spaceman to create revised planograms.
• Use Portfolio Optimizer simulation software to assess the impact of deleting SKUs from the assortment or adding others to full distribution.

Project Content

Product Assortment analyses deliver measures of SKU importance across both the category and the brand, quantifying the incrementality and cannibalization effects on both. Clients have the option of which product attributes to use in the analysis, preferably those resulting from a Market Structure analysis.

Results can be delineated by retail accounts, client custom regions, or total U.S. by channel.

Delivery Options

Product Assortment Analyses are delivered in a professional presentation by an experienced Modeling & Analytics specialist. All analyses are accompanied by professional consultation and recommendations for SKU delistment and/or distribution expansion, and simulated impact on volume and profit.

Each analysis includes Microsoft-centric output in Excel and PowerPoint and the Portfolio Optimizer, a desktop simulation tool capable of assessing the sales and profit impact of SKU add/drop scenarios versus the current assortment.

ACNielsen Modeling & Analytics provides actionable business recommendations founded upon well-supported modeling techniques, with a history of market acceptance. The modeling framework determines underlying consumer preferences within different accounts and matches that against the product assortment actually carried on the retail shelf. Using these models and accounting for cannibalization, Product Assortment tools can:

• Strengthen retail relationships by providing actionable recommendations on how to meet assortment goals and improve ROI.
• Provide solutions to exhibit recommended changes in a revised planogram via Product Planner and Spaceman.
• Heighten the impact of category management initiatives by implementing efficient product assortment strategies, aiding in the reduction of operating expenses.

Product Assortment

Product Assortment solutions are based on your unique business questions, bringing consultative recommendations in support of your business strategy and marketplace goals. No other assortment tool in the marketplace can quantify the percentage of each item’s sales that is incremental to the category versus what proportion simply cannibalizes sales of other items on the shelf.

To achieve a comprehensive solution to assortment and portfolio management issues, Product Assortment can be combined with Shopper Optimizer. Shopper Optimizer enables you to determine what SKU assortment reaches the highest number of buying households and the extent of buyer incrementality generated by each item.

Assortment Solutions can be integrated with other modeling capabilities, such as Market Structure/Preference Segmentation, Product Planner and Spaceman, to create a comprehensive view of the category, from consumers to shelf.

What VNU Data Types and Sources Can Be Integrated with this Offering?

ACNielsen Scantrack

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