Customers are Tired of Empty Shelves, and it’s Time for a Fix

For customers, many aspects of a shopping trip impact whether they view it as a success. From the customer service of store associates to the quality of the products for sale, every store visit has its own unique factors that play into a customer’s overall satisfaction — factors that become irrelevant if the product a shopper is looking for isn’t available.

Unfortunately, on-shelf product availability continues to be a key issue within grocery retail. According to a Retail Insight survey of over 1,000 U.S. grocery shoppers, 78% of consumers have experienced out-of-stock products in-store over the last 12 months, and 68% have experienced the same issue online. Furthermore, 75% of consumers said that poor product availability seems to be more of a problem sincethe pandemic, suggesting that developing factors like labor shortages and climate change are more to blame for the current situation plaguing retailers.

Tackling this problem is complex. Traditional methods of manual audits and gap scans are time-intensive and only provide a picture of your availability at that given moment in time. Retailers that have moved to a data-driven approach have improved their sales, operational efficiency and overall profitability.