Mind 1 shelf 0 !

What's on your consumers mind is it on your shelf ? is a good question to always ask both at a marketing front and on the operations front in retail , or any other consumer product business .

Brands spend crores in driving awareness and desire , when the consumers come seeking in for the product , its a sheer waste when they dont find what they have come looking for .This is what the blog would term as "mind1 shelf0 "(tm) phenomenon ( where on the mind gets 1 , not on your shelf gets 0 )

So why does this happen always , yes its a historical issue but never is addressed ...here is this blogs take on the why piece

i) Too many variants ::most of the problems occur due to the brand's great desire to satisfy everyone , thus the great urge for more skus 'which could take the shape of too many colors ,sizes , contents etc , so more the variants more the chance of "mind 1 shelf 0 " phenomenon ,take a max of two winning variants , with proper demand forecasting and production planning you will see the difference .

ii) Under Projection :: Sometimes demand > supply , due to wrong demand estimation or unexpected customer reaction ( very ideal situation !) rarely happens these days ,this situation gets corrected naturally as when demand > supply , the consumers would come back asking for it , so you get time to correct the "mind 1 shelf 0 " phenomenon.

iii) Operations and SCM :: If you dont know what is moving on an online basis , what size , color etc and what is not moving then GOD only help you .it will be "mind 1 shelf 0 " always and soon " mind 0 shelf 0 " for you ! .

iv ) The Great Vendor debate ::In spite of most brands having the state of art IT deployment , and putting a horde of team members behind whats mentioned in point iii) above , they are not able to get their act right still as their is the great Vendor dependency .if the Vendor is not aligned ,you had it !

so how does "mind1 shelf0" get measured

low conversion percentage :: Bills generated as a percentage to the footfalls to your counter is a good measure , higher the conversion could be an indicator to "mind1 shelf 1 " ( ie what is on the mind is on the shelf thus 1 1) , although conversion is not only influenced by this factor .

low items per bill ,or upt :: the other measure is the number of items that a consumer generates per bill , a low item per bill is an quickly good indicator for your" mind 1 ,shelf 0 " phenomenon .

With a growing apathy of going out considering the traffic scene in most cities , and a shopping also being driven by Word of mouth ,consumers don't have the time and desire to give outlets a second chance so brands would do well to get their play on "mind 1 shelf 0 " right , otherwise it would be soon "MIND 0 SHELF 0 " soon for your business !