A Quick Guide to Shop Audit

Shop audits are analyses of particular retail locations carried out by brand ambassadors or staff members to gather information about the condition of the brand’s goods. For this article, we’ll talk about supplier-related shop audits. Brand representatives gather the following kinds of data:

• Number of sales.
• Stock levels. (Shelf and backstock)
• Descriptions of promotional items and in-store displays.
• Competitor behavior.
• Missing or incorrect shelf tags and the number of facings and SKUs on the shelves measure planogram compliance.
• Pricing.
• Items that are located inside the store.
• Product damage.

Different shop audit forms should be used to reflect the data gathered during a given store visit accurately. The following is a list of multiple shop audit types that a supplier might use.

Survey of the retail market

Brands may occasionally want to be aware of the general environment in which their products are stocked (or may be stocked in the future). You may record the following:

• By polling customers and observing how they interact with the brand, brands can learn about consumer attitudes toward them and their rivals.
• The location and look of the store. Is the store in an urban or suburban setting, and how does the store’s facade look? Also, consider whether the store is clean and well-organized.
• Quantitative and qualitative data about the other brands that are sold there. Are the majority of brands in your category new or established? How many of them are held by the competing brands?

Merchandising Report

The brand’s performance is the main focus of this kind of shop audit. Merchandising reports are used by reps to log:

• Levels of inventory.
• Stockouts.
• The state of the products.
• The amount of open shelf space.
• Ordered units.
• Retail cost.
• General shelf appearance.

A finished product that resembles the merchandise report below can be created using this information.

Report for promotion

To know how a brand is doing in the short term and how to advance in the future, it’s critical to monitor the success of any sales or other special promotions that the brand runs. Reporting is essential. Collect the following information:

• The promotion’s duration.
• The SKUs of the featured products.
• A job at a store.
• Sales outcomes.

Even if the promotion was effective, are retailers following the rules regarding the placement of promotional materials? Representatives can use this information to produce a promotional report like the one below.

Competitor analysis

The competitor audit in shop audit strategy is one that brands should pay attention to because it can provide beneficial information about how your brand compares to others in its category. The following are important to note:

• Identifying your store’s direct and indirect competitors.
• The pricing tactics of opponents.
• How many facings do rivals have available? Is your brand suffering from serious distractions?
• Where in the store are the products of rivals located? Are they strategically placed at eye level, close to a checkout counter, or in a high- or low-traffic area?
• Any marketing campaigns they might be running.

Steps for Your Next Shop Audit.

How can your company ensure that shop audits are being carried out correctly now that it is aware of their inherent value? Take a look at the following process to ensure that your team gets the most out of each store visit.

1. Clearly state your objectives

Establish your shop audit’s primary goals. Write what you aim to measure through the audit and assign numerical or qualitative values to each plan as a parameter for success.

2. guidelines for design audits

Choose the precise questions for the shop audit and acceptable answers. Avoid asking pointless questions; only request information that can help your business improve (i.e., performance indicators for brands, competitor activity, retailer compliance, etc. See the example of the level of specificity to include in your survey questions below.

3. Set up appointments.

It’s time to conduct the retail audit once you’ve decided what you hope to gain from it. When choosing which accounts to send to, try to be consistent. In this way, individual reps can develop a rapport with store management and become very knowledgeable about their respective stores. Recognize that some retailers may desire advance notice before representatives visit their location.

4. compile information and images

Ensure the data your reps gather directly relates to your established objectives and standards. If specific retail survey questions are crucial to the company’s goals, marking them as “mandatory” might make sense. Encouraging accountability and compliance by including photos in shop audits is best. Review the data collection methods used by reps and think about how to improve them, ideally with software (more on this below).

5. Analyze the outcomes

Organize your data in a format that is simple to understand after the shop audit is finished. Graphical representations of numerical values are possible, while tags for notes can be used to categorize them. Compare the outcomes you’ve obtained to your chosen KPIs to see how they compare.

6. Do the Necessary Changes

Execute the necessary short-term actions after analyzing the results. Suppose, for instance, that you quickly remove a specific SKU from shelves after finding that it performs noticeably worse than others across several locations. Or, you can wait until you’ve gathered data over a more extended period and make long-term business decisions.

7. Repeat the procedure

You will be able to modify your retail audit procedure as necessary to suit the particular requirements of your business after carrying out a number of them. By conducting shop audits regularly, your company will be able to react quickly to the retail environment’s constant change.