Shelf gap

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Shelf gap in dog food

As stockout ( English out-of-stock , OOS) will retail a shelf space designated, no longer by the intended product filled and empty.

General

The aim of replenishment management is a constantly high availability of goods with low store stocks . Both factors are determined by a complex interplay of demand forecasts , sales , order points , delivery rhythms and logistics processes . If this interaction does not work optimally, there will inevitably be gaps in the shelves or, on the contrary, overstock .

Gaps in the shelves are relatively more common in shops with a small sales area , in rural areas , with slow- moving items , at the beginning of the week and with new products than with established products.

causes

Out of shelves due to Hurricane Lane (August 2018)

There is a gap on the shelves if the item planned as in stock cannot be found in its original shelf space marked with the corresponding price tag . This is why there is also a gap in the shelf if the article is still available in the store, but is not in the correct shelf location (“Phantom-OoS”). The most common causes of unplanned gaps in the shelves are listing differences, ordering problems, inadequacies when filling shelves, and delivery and placement problems.

The shelf gap is usually a supply gap and an indication of a lack of delivery readiness and shelf optimization , which leads to shortages . It reveals the existence of warehouse risks and can be due to a delivery bottleneck or poor procurement management . In a worldwide study in 2002, an average OoS rate of 8.3% was determined. Out-of-stock situations occur most frequently in the area of haberdashery and personal care products . Electronics and household paper, on the other hand, are rarely affected.

Another cause of gaps in shelves can be a sudden excess demand that retailers cannot compensate for in the short term. The reasons for this are in particular natural disasters such as storms or floods as well as epidemics ( e.g. the COVID-19 pandemic ) that lead to hamster purchases . They can also be attributed to supply bottlenecks if suppliers can not increase their production immediately or if supply chains do not function optimally ( supply chain management ).

The main causes of gaps in the shelves are listing differences (46%), problems in the ordering process (29%), problems with refilling (14%), production and delivery bottlenecks (6%) and other causes (5%).

Such out-of-stock situations are to be assessed negatively from an economic point of view. Gaps in the shelves reduce sales revenue and sales volume , make sales planning more difficult (distorted sales data ), cause unnecessarily high logistics costs in the retail branches and worsen the image of the shop concerned. Gaps in the shelves then lead to lost sales due to shortages because retailers could have sold more products (“ out of stock ”).

Customer reactions

According to a study, the reaction of customers to shelf gaps is composed as follows: business change (37%), postponement of purchase (22%), change of variant (21%), abandonment of purchase (11%) or brand change (9%). The abandoned purchases and business changes lead to falling sales and thus to falling sales of up to 3%. Therefore, the unplanned gap on the shelves is one of the central problems on the procurement side of retailers . If customers find gaps in the shelves, according to another study, 37% buy another brand ( substitute good ), 21% change stores , 17% postpone the purchase, 16% buy a different package size and 9% give up the purchase.

The customer satisfaction declines and may lead to a final change of the store.

Possible solutions

To solve the problem of unplanned gaps in shelves, many measures are conceivable that start at various points in the supply chain. A first step is to make retail employees aware of the problem because they are responsible for stocking the shelves. Furthermore, ERP systems such as B. Auto disposition systems help ensure that orders are always carried out in accordance with the expected demand .

For a few years now, measures to improve shelf availability have been investigated in logistics management under the term “Optimal Shelf Availability (OSA)” .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus Behrenbeck / Jörn Küpper / Karl-Hendrik Magnus, Supply Chain Excellence in Retail , 2005, p. 51 f.
  2. ↑ Tina Simone Placzek, Optimal Shelf Availability , 2007, p. 4
  3. ↑ Thomas Hegenbart, Customer behavior when items are not available in retail stores , 2009, p. 35
  4. ↑ a b c d e Roland Helm / Thomas Hegenbart / Wolfgang Stölzle / Florian Hofer: The difficult last 50 meters. In: Marketing. 2, 2007, p. 48
  5. ↑ Thomas W. Gruen / Daniel Corsten / Sundar Bharadwaj: Retail Out of Stocks: A Worldwide Examination of Causes, Rates, and Consumer Responses. Grocery Manufacturers of America, Washington DC 2002. (online at: itsoutofstock.com , PDF)
  6. ↑ They arise when the mandatory product availability of an article is not implemented by the retail outlet or is only implemented with a delay in the case of new products
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Stölzle / Tina Simone Placzek, Yawning emptiness instead of the goods , in: Lebensmittel Zeitung No. 36, 2004, p. 68
  8. ^ Thomas W. Gruen / Daniel Corsten: A Comprehensive Guide to Retail Out-of-Stock Reduction in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods Industry. Grocery Manufacturers of America, Washington DC 2008, ISBN 978-3-905613-04-9 . (online at: itsoutofstock.com , PDF)
  9. ↑ Wolfgang Stölzle / Tina Simone Placzek, Yawning emptiness instead of the goods , in: Lebensmittel Zeitung No. 36, 2004, p. 68
  10. ↑ Tina Simone Placzek, Optimal Shelf Availability , 2007, p. 5