An optimised product assortment can increase sales

Product selection is a key element of every retailer and manufacturer’s strategy: it influences many important decisions from price to promotions, from innovation to consumers’ store choice. To illustrate this, it is enough to list Hungarian consumers’ top 5 store choice criteria: 1. They always have what I want to buy, 2. I can quickly find what I need, 3. I can buy everything in the same shop, 4. Good and exciting promotions, 5. Top quality premium brands. Four of these are directly connected to product selection. Nielsen analyses many essential aspects in a complex way to help stores or retail chains decide on the optimal product selection. For instance it can be specified what kind of product portfolio can maximise category or brand sales. An international example showed that in the fruit juice category 55 percent of the portfolio had to be apple juice, 24 needed to be blueberry, 2 percent were grapes and 1-1 percent were tomato and other special flavours. Result: category sales soared 11 percent.