Mapping out a convenience store planogram - the ultimate guide

According to a NACS study, 77 percent of Americans frequently stop at convenience stores to refuel and eat. Because the product selection is primarily created for customers who want to grab a few goods and walk to the checkout quickly, planograms for these businesses and convenience stores must be built with many data points in mind.

Planograms are essential in any retail setting, including convenience stores. They begin with the category management team and conclude before your customers. 

In this article, we'll look at the many types of planograms and what to look for while designing them to be profitable.

Why are planograms so important in merchandising?

A grocery shop planogram is a method of arranging products on store shelves.

While most buyers expect to buy before entering a convenience store, you may always encourage impulse purchases. Create a planogram based on the data to raise the number of impulse purchases and the average receipt. You can leverage both your visual merchandising knowledge and data on sales, turnover, inventory and profit per meter to build planograms

A well-designed planogram boosts sales of particular product categories while increasing overall store earnings.

Related: Top 5 Planogram Optimization Solutions for Retail in 2022

Effective planograms and a well-designed merchandising business strategy increase customer service since the goods are visually visible to customers. It is intuitively evident where to look and whether the store offers the categories that the consumer requires. Customer satisfaction and loyalty are essential in a competitive industry and unforeseen conditions like the COVID-19 epidemic.

Merchandising automation tools will help you create "stores for customers":

• Design floor plans with categories in mind.
• Simulate and test your planograms to meet customers' expectations.
• Analyze how your changes affect sales in your chain.

What matters while working with convenience store planograms?

Considering the changing market trends, it is necessary to monitor the quality and relevance of the calculations constantly. It is crucial to control the quality indicators and the effectiveness of planograms to do this.

We advise you to change the layout of goods based on the changes of:

• seasonal demand;
• costs;
• sales volumes;
• packaging;
• customer habits (when regular customers come to their usual store, they clearly know where the salt is and go exactly there, despite all the other products, the rearrangement allows consumers to look around);
• promotions.

When working with planograms, it is also important to regularly analyze the effectiveness of the changes made. The fundamental indicators that we advise analyzing are: 

• cost per meter;
• turnover per meter by category;
• profit per meter;
• the fullness of the shelf space;
• return on profit ratio.

When building planograms for convenience stores, keep the following in mind

Location

The local demand affects the convenience stores. As a result, when developing the range of goods, it is vital to consider the character of buyer behavior in a specific location or settlement. It is critical to create a planogram once and test it for compliance with customer needs regularly.

It also works in the opposite direction. You may develop a store assortment that suits a specific region/city by evaluating store sales.

You can generate bespoke planograms for each store or individual clusters of stores with similar performance and assortment using Leafio Planogram Optimization.

Inventory accounting

Because convenience stores can't always have the capacity to stock a large inventory, it's critical to keep stock levels adequate so that shelves don't become visually heavy or "packed."

This issue is generally solved by creating a positional planogram generated concerning the parameters of the goods. You can change the assortment on the shelves and, as a result, identify items that need to be returned, for example. As a result, the leftover stock is lowered or sold individually.

Planograms help to control and optimize inventory levels in stock indirectly. The auto-order system's algorithm, for example, is based on the correct presentational stock. It can only be generated by creating a planogram.

With the software for automating the development of planograms, you will never forget about a goods supply in the warehouse because the system regularly transmits information about stocks and sales. As a result, notifications that the layout has to be updated are generated. You will not have a chance to freeze leftovers and not take the goods to customers in the hall.

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You can also make use of the "Clean Warehouse" technology. The bottom line is that the shelf stock is calculated such that it will last until the next delivery from the supplier.

The number of items on the shelf and the number of days between deliveries must be balanced. You can automatically calculate the stock you need with a shelf space management solution.

Customer Experience

People shop at convenience stores because they can purchase what they need without traveling far from home or because there is something in stock that they forgot about in larger stores. Customers should be able to quickly find a product and go to the checkout without waiting. Consumer products should be displayed at eye level and inaccessible locations throughout the store. Merchandising planning and planogramming should be done in such a way as to encourage customers to make additional purchases in the short time they spend in the store.

Space use

Because convenience shops are often tiny, making efficient use of shelf space is critical when designing a hall plan and a visually appealing layout. Profitable goods should be given sufficient space. Planograms for convenience stores will help you properly manage space and ensure that your consumers get exactly what they want.

How to make planograms and examine their modifications

Retail chain managers, category managers, and convenience store merchandisers can use the LEAFIO shelf space management software to create a transparent merchandising business process. You'll get tools for:

• making store plans for all the chain's stores to assess the effectiveness of your actions;
• crystallization of the assortment throughout the retail chain, and understanding which products are the most profitable in your chain;
• creating planograms manually unification of planograms over the chain;
• construction of auto-layout taking into account statistics on sales, turnover, etc.
• analysis of the usefulness of planograms as a tool for assigning, regulating, and performing responsibilities for laying out store staff in a specific store and the chain as a whole;
• a tool for setting, controlling, and fulfilling tasks for laying out store employees.

To learn more about the LEAFIO Planogram Optimization solution, please submit your request, and we will contact you as soon as possible.