When creating assortments, the customer needs to be at the forefront of any decision.
It is important to maintain a balance between keeping customers happy with a broad product range, and generating as much sales/profit as possible with a financially prioritised range.
A useful way to think about range breadth is to imagine what a customer could purchase as an alternative, given the removal of a particular product.
Example
Would a customer buying a 4 slot black Phillips toaster pick up an alternative brand or model if the preferred item was not stocked?
- A 2 slot variant might not be as practical
- A different colour variant might not match the customers kitchen
- Another brand may not have the same reputation for quality / reliability
Ranging within a cluster should contain products from a variety of important branches of the CDT to ensure breadth of choice, with a slight bias towards the product groups that the clustering output suggests perform well in the cluster.
At the clustering stage in the range process, it is useful to create cluster summary pages that can be referred to when building assortments.
The under/over performance of each differential can be used as a guide to how strongly you should range a cluster towards a particular group of products.
Sometimes it is useful to find a cluster that is close to the center (regarding the differentials) and build this as your base. Other clusters can be based upon this, swapping a few products out to tailor the cluster to its customer base.
It is also essential to think about “Must Stock Lines”. These are items that may not perform well but facilitate the performance of other products within the cluster. (E.G. coffee filters within the filter coffee category).
REMEMBER – The initial ranges created by the Retailigence tool will automatically be curated to reflect different cluster strengths & weaknesses.