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THE CHALLENGE
As a leading UK retailer Sainsbury’s is focussed on delivering an ever improving quality shopping experience for its customers with great product at fair prices. Sainsbury’s aim is to exceed customer expectations for healthy, safe, fresh and tasty food, making their lives easier every day.
Sainsbury’s wanted to improve its market position and used its customer insights team to find out what their customers wanted and how they could be served better.
They found that availability was a key driver of customer dissatisfaction and a potential area for development.
It was important for Sainsbury’s to understand why availability was a problem across their estate and find a way to change this.
IRI APPROACH
Sainsbury’s required a solution that would get buy in from all levels of the company and had their mission at its heart. It would also need to add real value to key business issues.
The key priorities for Sainsbury’s were speed, quality and ‘retail know how’. RI worked with the insights team to create the Mystery Availability Check (MAC).
MAC is a store audit of on-shelf availability, utilising the IRI field force. It is reported by store, region and zone with one measure used for the whole business.
With an in depth knowledge of the retail environment IRI was also able to offer analysis and insights and recommendations across problem areas.
RESULTS
MAC gave Sainsbury’s access to vital tracking information. With this they were able to identify under or over performing areas and work to improve them.
With the right products on the shelves at the right time, customer satisfaction levels increased. This contributed to a sales recovery and helped Sainsbury’s to increase its market share.
Sainsbury’s improved performance and availability also hit the headlines in the UK press:
“Price cuts and fuller shelves helped Sainsbury’s business grow sales by £467m in the 6 months to 8th October.” Daily Express 17 November 2005
“Focusing on fresh produce has paid off and the shelves are now fully stocked when and where they need to be.” Daily Telegraph 17 November 2005
BENEFITS
IRI were able to add real value to data through analysis and evaluation of key issues. Recommendations were made on how to tackle the issues affecting stock levels, both in-store and through the supply chain.
Teamwork, trust and communication between IRI and Sainsbury’s helped to make the project a success.
Mystery availability checking created one consistent measure that everyone was able to work towards.
IRI SOLUTIONS
One of the fundamental issues facing retailers and manufacturers is the assurance of having products on shelf and available for purchase. The ramifications for a lack of availability can be a lot more damaging than simply lost sales, as customers’ loyalty can wane or even disappaer entirely if products are continually unavailable.
IRI provides information on several key areas of availability. Promotion availability enables you to track the presence or otherwise of lines in-store and by location within each store. With stock availability, IRI can record the number of items available on shelf, indicating the likelihood of an out of stock situation. Launch availability measures the growth of distribution of new products weekly and used with census sales and distribution data, shows actual availability in store.
InfoForce Availability can provide regional data, same day turn around, promotional information and customised store groupings.
For more information please contact your IRI representative, call +44 (0)1344 746000 or email sales@infores.com
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"Sainsbury’s wanted to create a better shopping experience for their customers. With the mystery availability check IRI were able to add real value to the Sainsbury’s business, through helping them identify problem areas and address them.
Sainsbury’s and IRI worked together to make targeting availability part of every day life."
Joanne Dawson
Account Director, IRI
MAC helped Sainsburys to pinpoint areas across categories, regions, zones and stores where stock availability was an issue.
With an improved view across their estate Sainsbury’s were able to act to make sure the right products were on shelf at the right time.
Better on-shelf availability has led to higher levels of customer satisfaction and increased sales, helping Sainsbury’s to improve their market position.
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