Audit retail covers distribution channels such as supermarkets, shops, kiosks, pavilions, open markets.

Retail audit allows you to study various parameters of retail trade in dynamics: the range of goods of various groups in retail trade, the placement of goods in retail premises, variety of packaging, price level of competing brands, etc. The information received is grouped according to various criteria ( price groups, packaging, presence of additives, etc.). Thus, a complete positioning map of the product group under study is formed. The value of such a picture lies in the possibility of projecting the obtained data onto the entire local market selected for research, which is only possible if correct formation samples retail outlets.

Research objectives for which the retail-audit methodology is used:

• Monitoring and analysis of market prices over a selected period of time. The study includes a series of periodic price slices of the market at certain intervals through an audit retail network and surveying potential consumers.
• Formation of a database of enterprises Effective marketing policy – necessary condition successful activities of the company in the market. Management of any commercial enterprises working in the goods market mass demand, it is important to know where the retail outlets are located, through which it is possible to sell the products they produce, and most importantly, how many retail outlets have so far remained without their attention. Sooner or later, every company is faced with the need to expand its customer base. As a result of the research, we receive a complete database of enterprises in the region, which will allow us to expand our customer base, organize advertising campaigns, organize our own research, and assess the competitive environment.

Cost of work

The cost of retail audit work is from 5 to 11 rubles per item.

Examples of our research

Cigarette survey (Home test)

By order: TNS-MITS, Moscow

Assessing the quality of work of network employees furniture showrooms

By request: Information is confidential

The success of the research depends not only on the volume and quality of the assessments, but mainly on how we analyze them and how we can make them work in the interests of the company. Using the example of a real study, we will demonstrate the results that Retail Audit can give us.

Material for work - table

For the work of analysts of a company that ordered a Retail Audit report, the table itself serves as the main material. As an example, the article uses the results of Retail Audit in the form of several spreadsheets, each of which contains more than 2600 rows, that is, more than 2600 types of goods, and 28 columns with various sales characteristics of each type of product.
Companies that have commissioned a Retail Audit and received a report often use it as a reference to answer the questions: “What is the average price of my brand in a supermarket?”, “What is the average price of a competing brand?”, and “What is the number of distribution both brands? The importance of answering such questions is undeniable. However, it is puzzling to deliberately limit the use of a Retail Audit report to obtaining background information only, especially when the selling company orders and receives such reports on a regular basis.
In this case, the company has at its disposal material for analyzing the dynamics of the retail market and, in some cases, forecasting.
This article discusses a possible approach to working with Retail Audit data, and also provides an example of processing data from several Retail Audit reports specific product relating to different periods of time.

Purpose and objectives of audit analysis

The goals and objectives (or the need to formulate goals and objectives) that the company sets for itself determine the form and content of the questions to which the Retail Audit data analysis should provide answers.
Almost any company, when analyzing the market for its product using Retail Audit, wants to have an answer to the following questions:

• What is the market for my product as a whole, how does its sales volume (average price, distribution) change in retail?
• What is the number of market participants and brands present, how has it changed over time? Lately?
• Who are my competitors? Who occupies similar positions, selling retail goods at the same price and in the same volume?
• How are my competitors developing? How are their retail sales changing? How do these changes compare to my brand's sales performance?
• What is the numerical distribution of my brand and competitors' brands? What changes have occurred in the size of numerical distribution recently and how has this affected sales volumes?
• What is the price of my brand and competitors' brands at retail? How have prices changed recently?

Of course, it is not always possible to formulate an absolutely adequate list of questions, if only because the actions of competitors are difficult to predict and the whims of buyers are not obvious. It may be that a new product package from a competing brand, launched on the market, steadily increases consumer demand for all packaging options for that brand offered on the market. Such a conclusion may well be made based on an analysis of Retail Audit data, but it is quite difficult to predict such a situation in advance, much less formulate it in the form of a specific question. The potential for unpredictable, non-obvious conclusions is one of the reasons that makes working with data sets exciting, leaving room for creativity.

Defining Analysis Parameters

Let's consider a company that sells product X. The company offers the consumer several brands of product X, the most popular of which is trademark N. The company is quite successful, well known to consumers and is one of the market leaders. For the coming year, the company has set a goal: to introduce a new brand of product X to the market and achieve a leading position in sales of the new brand of this product. The company has at its disposal several reports on the results of the Retail Audit of product X, completed over the past 20 months. And now the company has set the analytical department the task of analyzing this data in order to complement and specify the company’s existing understanding of the market for product X and the position of brand N in this market.
The company's analysts decided to analyze the state of the market as a whole and its changes recently from several points of view, as well as to conduct a more in-depth analysis of the positions of competitors of the existing N brand. Additionally, it was decided to investigate the position of the elite S brand, also offered by the company on the market and unpopular with the mass buyer from the point of view of possible refusal to work with elite brands of goods and concentration of the company’s efforts only on mass brands.
The next step after setting the problem is to determine the parameters in which the result of the analysis will be presented. The sales characteristics presented in the Retail Audit report can be selected as parameters. Along with them, new parameters can be introduced, obtained on the basis of criteria independently formulated by the analyst. Parameters can also be combined with each other, allowing you to display information from a variety of angles.
Let us turn to data on the monthly sales volume of brand N in the sales volume of product X
In the figure, sales growth of the N brand was 14%, while market growth was 24%, the share of the N brand in total sales decreased by 1% (from 10.5% to 9.5%).
Before continuing to analyze the data and try to find possible reasons decline in market share, analysts decided to introduce their own analysis parameter - the price level.
Based on this parameter, four price segments of product X were identified: low-price, mid-price, Premium and SuperPremium. The following segment boundaries were chosen:

• low-price segment – ​​the price of product X in standard packaging is less than 60 rubles per unit of product;
• mid-price segment – ​​the price of product X in standard packaging is less than 120 rubles per unit of product;
• Premium segment – ​​the price of goods X in standard packaging is less than 210 rubles per unit of goods;
• SuperPremium segment – ​​the price of product X in standard packaging is more than or equal to 210 rubles per unit of product.

As a result, analysts got an idea of ​​the distribution of the market by price segments and the dynamics of this distribution (see Figure 2).
It can be seen that over the period under consideration, the consumption of product X not only increased, but the pattern of consumption also changed. The buyer is less and less focused on cheap brands, whose share in the total retail sales decreased by 12%, he prefers the mid-price segment. In addition, retail sales of fairly expensive brands (Premium segment) have doubled during this time, although their share in total sales is still small.
Brand N is in the middle price segment.
The company intended to position a new brand in the same segment, at the same time the company decided to consider the possibility of positioning the N brand in a more expensive version in the Premium segment.
Figure 3 shows a combination of the parameters "price segment" and "trademark" of product X in accordance with the belonging of each brand to a certain price segment.
The result demonstrated the departure of cheap brands of product X from the market and a likely tendency towards saturation of the market with brands in the mid-price segment, a more or less constant increase in the number of brands in the Premium segment and stagnation of the market in terms of the number of brands in the SuperPremium segment.
The more than 100% increase in the number of brands in the mid-price segment demonstrates a serious increase in competition, which was one of the reasons for the previously identified weakening of the position of the N brand.
The next step in the work was to consider the market from the point of view of the distribution of retail sales volumes by packaging volume of product X (Figure 4)
The result revealed a gradual increase in the popularity of purchasing product X in packaging that is larger than the standard size. The most obvious explanation for the phenomenon is the buyer’s desire to save money, because larger packaging is cheaper per unit of production. But taking into account the growth in the volume of consumption of goods X in general and the growth in incomes of the population, as well as the decrease in the share of consumption of cheap brands of goods X, we can conclude that the trend under consideration is more likely due to changes in the socio-cultural context of the consumption of goods X. These changes can be expressed as that, when making a purchase of product X, the buyer focuses not on one person (himself), but on a group of people, as well as in the growing practice of forming a permanent home range of product X.
The management of the company made the following decision regarding the new brand of product X: to offer the market new brand not only in standard packaging, but also in larger packages, as well as to conduct an additional detailed study of consumer preferences in order to use as accurate information as possible about the profile of today's consumer of product X, the reasons and conditions for making a purchase when positioning and developing a marketing mix product X and the choice of a specific brand and packaging volume.

Analysis of the positions of competitive market participants

In this example, the number of brands for product X is 200 in January 2002 and 345 in September 2003.
The company's analysts, along with the analysis of the market as a whole, began to study the positions of competitors of the brand N - brands of the same price segment, occupying the closest positions in terms of retail sales. Analysts examined the positions of brand N and its competitors in terms of sales volume, numerical distribution and the average price of product X in a standard package.
Figure 5 shows that brands B and F demonstrate rapid growth in sales volume and numerical distribution. Moreover, the sales volume of brand B is growing faster than the sales volume of brand F and exceeds the latter at a lower level of numerical distribution. Both brands belong to manufacturers that have long been known to the market and have proven themselves with positive side in the eyes of the consumer. A price comparison shows a significant difference in the price of these two brands, which is most likely the reason for the more successful market penetration of brand B. The clear tendency towards a narrowing of the price range in which all three brands operate signals a possible refusal from using price as a competitive difference for brand N from brand F, which represents a product of similar quality, but more expensive, and from brand B, the initial cheapness of which could raise doubts among consumers about the quality of the product.
The main conclusion of the analysts was this: when introducing a new brand of product X to the market at the same or almost the same price as brand N, the company will not be able to appeal to the price as competitive advantage, and a set of marketing activities developed to position a new brand should be focused on other advantages of the new brand in the eyes of the consumer.
Analysts also examined the positions of the elite S brand (the brand belongs to the SuperPremium segment). The sales volume of product X under the elite brand is small, and abandonment of the elite direction in favor of the mass one was likely for the company.
A comparison was made of the positions of the S brand and the competing brand Q, which is one of the leaders among the elite brands of product X, and also serves as a guide in the development and launch of the company's S brand (Fig. 6 and 7)
The conclusion was made as follows: since the S brand demonstrates positive sales trends, its abandonment is not necessary, especially since the company’s image only benefits from the presence of an elite brand in its product portfolio. Therefore, if economic feasibility allows maintaining and developing this brand, efforts should be made to increase its numerical distribution while maintaining the achieved price level.
Thus, Retail Audit helped to draw a number of important conclusions and clarify the understanding of the market to more accurately set tasks for future research.
In conclusion, we note that despite the size and cumbersomeness of the reports, Retail Audit data does not deserve to serve as a momentary reference and then be forgotten on the very top shelf somewhere in the analytical department. This is a material that you can and should work with.

Reference

Retail Audit – periodic collection of information on sales statistics of a certain product at retail outlets with the subsequent generation of a report.
The report fields contain the following data on product sales: manufacturer, brand, sales volume, average price, numerical distribution, distribution channel, etc.
In most cases, the Retail Audit report is spreadsheet, where the number of rows corresponds to the variety of types of goods in retail, and the column headings are the characteristics mentioned above. Sometimes, in addition, such a report may also present the results of primary data analysis, for example, the distribution of the total sales volume of a product by type of outlet.

Better to see once than hear a hundred times. Retailer control technologies are built on this principle. For each type of monitoring, individual information collection cards and, if necessary, special equipment are developed. ScanMarket designs monitoring based on the requirements of accuracy and efficiency. This allows you to obtain fairly detailed “photos” of how various sellers fulfill/fail to fulfill the terms of cooperation with manufacturers/suppliers.

Work results

Depending on the goals of the project, the result can be a table or a full-fledged report with an analysis of the data obtained. For example, when analyzing the supply of print media, the report includes the calculation of indicators:

• Representation (in general, by type of retail outlets, by operator, by day of the week, by district);
• Price (in general, in sections);
• Layout (in general, in sections);
• Seller's recommendations.

When measuring the supply of food products, several characteristics of the product are often included in the list of recorded parameters (brand, manufacturer, mass/weight, packaging material, fat content, etc.). The monitoring results are used to improve distribution policy, form partnerships with retail chains, control and stimulate (disincentivize) retailers.

Complex of works

1. Determination of product characteristics and retail network parameters. Before monitoring, you need to identify the parameters that will be monitored. To do this, at the initial stage of the study, expert interviews are conducted with representatives target group and employees of the customer company. Based on this information, a list of product characteristics (price, capacity, material and shape of packaging, type of product display, etc.) and operating parameters of the retail network (brands recommended by the seller) are formed, which will be studied in detail during marketing monitoring.
2. Formation of a sample of retail outlets. To obtain reliable data, it is necessary to correctly select a sample of retail outlets where observation will be carried out. The final sample must be, firstly, accurate (provided by a sufficient number of points under study), and secondly, representative (this property of the sample is achieved by a special system for selecting various types of points at which observation will be carried out). Information about retail outlets must be up-to-date and detailed.
3. Development of an observation sheet. An observation sheet is a specially designed form for recording information about the parameters that are being secretly monitored. The observation sheet must contain information about the parameters of the observation itself - the address and type of point visited by the observer, the time of observation and a number of other characteristics.
4. Hidden surveillance of selected parameters: representation on sale, display of products, prices, work of sellers, characteristics of the products presented. Covert surveillance is the field part of the project. Specially trained observers receive observation sheets, as well as, if necessary, additional illustrative materials with photographs of the observed products and move along established routes.
5. Control of information reliability. The monitoring conducted by the ScanMarket agency provides for the use of several means of monitoring employees collecting information.
6. Input, processing and analysis of received information. Observation sheets are entered into the computer using automatic scanner input. Further, the agency's analysts carry out the necessary data coding, analyze them and build the necessary distributions in accordance with the goals and objectives of marketing research.

Some retail outlets require a special approach to conduct a retail audit. For example, in some hypermarkets, the security service suppresses attempts to census the assortment, and in small shops clothes, all the actions of the copyist are in full view of the seller.

The ScanMarket agency carries out field work in any conditions. When developing a sheet, it is necessary to provide an unambiguous interpretation of the observed parameters. For example, what should the observer indicate in the “Producer” column for “House in the Village” milk - the company “Wimm-Bill-Dann” or “Lianozovo”? What to write down if information about the manufacturer is not visible? Working out these and similar details is an important preparatory part of the project. Its result is the compilation of special cards on which photographs of the products of the main market operators are presented.

If you have difficulty determining the price or availability of a product for sale, you can obtain information from the seller. ScanMarket uses the ABBYY Flexi Capture optical recognition system - automatically scanned entry of questionnaires eliminates manual entry errors and significantly reduces the time for generating even a very large automated database.

Publishing house "RDV-Media"

Publishing House RDV-Media actively cooperates with the ScanMarket agency.

Due to the wide range periodicals, published by our publishing house, the monitoring of the Moscow retail network is of particular interest.

Despite the fact that such work was regularly carried out on our own and some of the information could be obtained from distribution companies, ScanMarket’s research turned out to be necessary and useful. Attractive results this study in a wide coverage of retail outlets, daily collection of information throughout the week and adequate cost of work.

To carry out the project, the ScanMarket agency specially developed a methodology for collecting and processing information, which was based on our wishes expressed before the start of the project.

The report with the research results has a clear structure, is easy to use and will become a real tool for the work of our employees.

We express our gratitude to the ScanMarket agency for the quality work done and look forward to regularly conducting this research.

LLC "GidMarket"

Since 2007, the marketing agency GidMarket LLC has been actively researching industrial markets Russia, Kazakhstan, Europe and Asia. The agency's main product is market analysis based on state statistics, paid databases, industry sources and open data.

The marketing agency GidMarket LLC expresses its sincere gratitude to the MA Scanmarket LLC company for the fruitful and mutually beneficial cooperation in the field of field research.

We highly appreciate the level, efficiency and, most importantly, the timeliness of the solutions provided by your company. We plan to further cooperate with MA Scanmarket LLC in the field of b2c and b2b surveys, retail audits and Mystery Shopper projects.

tools and capabilities

KEY SERVICES

Trade audit

To be successful in retail, you need to be able to adapt to needs in a timely manner. target audience, respond adequately to the marketing moves of competitors. It is important to subtly sense changing trends and closely monitor sales. This does not require paranormal abilities: it is enough to have reliable data. A retail audit will help you get them - comprehensive assessment operation of a single point or an entire chain of stores.

Audit trading enterprise provides answers to the following questions:

• What pricing, assortment and trade marketing policies do competitors follow?
• Do the layout and volume of product display on the shelves correspond to the previously reached agreements recorded in the planograms? Are the storage conditions for the products met?
• What types of POS materials are used, are they appropriate? How efficiently is branded equipment (refrigerators, shelving) used?
• How competent are sellers, merchandisers, cashiers, on whose professionalism does the product’s reputation among buyers depend?
• Are there opportunities for sales growth?

Also, an audit of retail outlets allows you to determine the density of consumer flow, assess the gender and age composition of visitors, and calculate how much time on average they spend searching and selecting a product.

Thus, a retail audit helps, on the basis of which the manufacturer will decide how to influence the level of sales of its product.

Trade audit from the ITM group agency

Audit trade organization is a labor-intensive task that requires special knowledge, experience and specialized software. Therefore, manufacturers often outsource this task to ITM Group. The cost of an audit of retail outlets may be high, but it is an opportunity to correct mistakes and give the business new prospects.

We work throughout Russia and the CIS. Organization of accounting/audit of a trade organization from ITM Group is:

• our development - Staff Mobile application with photo recognition technology that processes hundreds of SKUs in 5 minutes. Integration into your SFA solution is possible!
• quick receipt of test results: in just a few minutes you will be aware of all violations and will be able to take timely measures;
• obtaining project data 24/7;
• retail audit, which will cover thousands of stores and hundreds of positions;
• online monitoring: collection of data about everything that happens to a product on the Internet, including dumping and unfair competition;
• Mystery Shopping services: a kind of audit sales representatives, the opportunity to obtain objective information about the skills of personnel;
• multi-channel audit: a combination of telephone surveys, desk research, inspections of retail outlets and online platforms;
• wide territorial coverage: We have 10 offices and more than 130 representative offices in Russian cities, which allows us to solve problems such as audit trading network on a federal scale.

Marketers, sociologists and analysts from the ITM Group agency organize trade audits in Moscow and other regions of the Russian Federation and the CIS.