What is Share of Shelf & What Does It Measure?
Ensuring that consumers can effortlessly find your products on store shelves is essential for maximising sales. When your share of shelf is optimised, your products stand out, and customers can easily locate them.
Share of shelf refers to the amount of space your brand occupies within a specific in-store category. This concept encompasses the physical volume of space your products take up, as well as their visibility and availability on the shelf. In a retail environment with limited display space, capturing the prime shelf locations—both visually and physically—can significantly influence consumer choices.
Optimising the share of shelf is not only about occupying more space but also about the quality of that space. Being positioned at eye level or in the most noticeable part of the shelf (often referred to as the “diamond zone”) can greatly enhance product visibility and attract more customers. A well-optimised share of shelf often translates to increased market share and higher sales.
What Are the Methods for Calculating Share of Shelf?
Accurately calculating your share of shelf is crucial for understanding and optimizing your product’s visibility in retail environments. Several methods exist, each varying in precision, effort, and reliability. From rudimentary visual estimations to advanced AI-powered image recognition, these techniques offer different levels of insight into your product’s shelf performance.
Understanding these methods allows brands to choose the most effective approach for their needs, ensuring they can strategically manage and enhance their shelf presence. Let’s explore the various methods available for calculating share of shelf.
Visual Estimation (Eyeballing)
This basic method involves auditors visually estimating the share of shelf without any precise measurements. While it’s quick and cost-effective, it’s highly prone to inaccuracies and subjective bias, making it unreliable for serious strategic decisions.
Counting Facings
A more accurate method than eyeballing, this approach involves counting the number of product facings on the shelf. For example, if your brand has six facings out of ten total facings on a shelf, your share of shelf is 60%. Although more reliable than visual estimation, this method can still be time-consuming, especially in complex or crowded categories.
Image Recognition
The most advanced and accurate method involves using AI-powered image recognition technology. Field agents take photos of the shelves, and the AI analyzes these images to calculate the share of shelf. This method eliminates human error, provides rapid results, and offers highly actionable data, making it the preferred choice for many leading brands.
Leading Image Recognition Vendors
Leading image recognition vendors leverage cutting-edge AI technology to provide highly accurate and actionable insights into shelf performance. These vendors offer solutions that eliminate human error, reduce time spent on manual audits, and deliver real-time data on product placement and shelf space utilisation.
Their advanced algorithms can identify products, count facings, and measure occupied space with remarkable precision, enabling brands to optimise their share of shelf space effectively.
Aforza, recognizing the importance of these innovative solutions, partners with many of the top image recognition vendors. Through the Aforza Studio Marketplace, clients have access to these leading-edge tools, ensuring they can maximise their retail strategy and execution.
EasyPicky
EasyPicky lets you activate the camera on your smartphone or tablet and walk the aisles of a store, collecting all field data through video and obtaining all your key performance indicators in an instant and on your CRM or other internal tool.
Neurolabs
Neurolabs is a premier synthetic computer vision partner. Their Synthetic Image Recognition (SIR) models harness image data to accurately identify and classify objects in retail stores. Aforza works with Neurolabs to capture and understand retail scenes, product availability and share of shelf, and take action.
ParallelDots
ParallelDots is a leading image recognition solution provider for FMCG companies and retailers globally, helping them optimize their in-store execution and maximize their sales. Aforza works with ParallelDots to undertand retail share of shelf, product availability, planogram compliance and competitive presence.
How Can this Insight Be Used?
Gaining insights from share of shelf data is just the beginning; the true value lies in how these insights are applied to drive strategic decisions and actions. By leveraging detailed information about product placement and shelf performance, brands can enhance their revenue, stay ahead of competitors, and support successful product launches.
The actionable data provided by share of shelf analysis empowers marketing, sales, and retail teams to make informed decisions, optimise in-store execution, and ultimately boost market share.
Take a look at this video demo of how quick and easy it is to take a watermarked photo in a retail store and have Aforza Studio automatically calculate the share of shelf against competitor brands across the category:
How Does Aforza Studio Take Action on Share of Shelf Insights?
Aforza Studio utilises share of shelf data to drive strategic decisions and actions. The platform integrates image recognition technology to provide real-time visibility into shelf performance. This enables brands to make immediate corrections and optimise product placement, ensuring compliance and maximising sales opportunities.
In summary, understanding and optimising share of shelf is vital for any brand aiming to improve its market presence and boost sales. Advanced tools like image recognition and platforms such as Aforza Studio provide precise, actionable insights that drive significant improvements in retail performance.
Check out the Aforza Studio Marketplace now and see how our Image Recognition partners can help you to understand Share of Shelf across your brand categories.