Core Principles for Supermarket Aisle Management

For many years, retailers have been searching for research methods to help them identify ways to improve their merchandise presentation. Some have used sales data and the category-management process to make product-assortment and shelf-arrangement decisions. Others decided to do analysis at a larger scale, looking at an aisle of a store instead of at individual categories. While aisle management may have some advantages over category management, the two methods are not mutually exclusive. Category data could be used to decide how to arrange related items on the shelf and information on customer traffic, buyer preferences, and sales for a section of a store could be used to place the categories and allocate space to each category. This research discusses the potential benefits of aisle management and reviews some principles from aisle-management research that may help many food retailers improve their store preferences