Leaflet and availability: how to keep leaflet products on the shelf all week?

Why the leaflet out-of-stock costs more than the others

The leaflet makes two promises: the product and the price. The shopper who comes for a leaflet product and finds the shelf empty experiences the out-of-stock as a broken promise, not as bad luck. The AECOC barometer measures that 31% of sales lost to out-of-stocks are linked to promotions; the ECR France / IRI survey places promoted products above the store’s average out-of-stock rate.

The mechanism is described in promotions and out-of-stocks: why the promotion runs out. The leaflet adds a constraint: a whole week to hold, on dozens of SKUs at once, with shoppers who come on the first day and the last.

Before leaflet week

1. Size each SKU on the last comparable operation: sales achieved, day of out-of-stock if there was one. A SKU that ran out on the Thursday of the previous operation gets a higher quantity, not the same one.
2. Order in two deliveries when possible: one before day one, a second mid-week, rather than a single pallet that clutters the back room and then runs out.
3. Check the promo pallet by SKU (receiving and checking by SKU): an incomplete pallet found on the first morning cannot be recovered.
4. Raise the reorder point of leaflet SKUs for the duration of the operation, otherwise automatic ordering reasons on usual sales (automatic ordering and out-of-stocks).
5. Plan two locations: the gondola end or the island, and the usual place on the shelf. The shopper who looks for the product in its place and does not find it concludes it is out of stock, even if the island is full at the other end of the store.

During the week

A daily count of leaflet products only, at a fixed time, at both locations. It takes ten minutes for fifty SKUs and gives every day:

Count	Decision
Product present at both locations	nothing
Island full, shelf empty	move part of the island to the shelf
Shelf full, island empty	bring back room up to the island
Both empty, book stock positive	look in the back room, correct stock (phantom stock)
Both empty, stock at zero	top-up order, or sign and reservation

This count is also the basis of the operation’s review: day of out-of-stock per SKU, to reuse for the next order.

When the product is missing anyway

A crossed-out “out of stock” label on the shelf sends the shopper to the competitor. Three practices work better:

• a dated reservation slip: the shopper leaves their name, the product is set aside at the next delivery, at the leaflet price;
• a replacement offer at the same price on an equivalent product, decided before the operation, not improvised at the till;
• a notice at the entrance on days when several leaflet products are missing, rather than discovery aisle by aisle.

A worked example (hypothetical)

Take a fictional case. Hypermarket, 180-SKU leaflet. Previous operation: 22 SKUs out of stock before Thursday, 14 of them on pallets delivered in one go on Monday. Next operation with split delivery on the 40 best-selling SKUs, daily count and raised reorder point: 7 SKUs out of stock before Thursday, none among the top 40. The store sold more on those 40 SKUs with lower average stock. The figures are illustrative.

What shopper reporting changes

During leaflet week, shoppers who report a missing leaflet product with ShelfAlert do the count for the store, at any hour and at both locations. The department manager sees at 3 pm that the gondola end has emptied, not at the next morning’s count. 14-day trial, no payment card: see the plan for store managers.

Sources

• AECOC, Barómetro OSA: AECOC presents the OSA barometer.
• ECR France / IRI out-of-stock barometer: LSA, out-of-stock rate.
• Gruen, Corsten, Bharadwaj, “Retail Out-of-Stocks: A Worldwide Examination”, GMA, 2002: full study (PDF).