Retail Merchandising Shelves: 5 Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Retail stores are one of the most important places for brands to get their products in front of consumers. It is no surprise that there is a lot of competition in this space. How do retail merchandising shelves give you a competitive edge in this fierce setting? What are the challenges that you can encounter and how to overcome them?

Here’s a fantastic retail merchandising shelf that we encountered upon visiting a 7-Eleven branch in Hong Kong. This particular custom shelf display features chewing gum products from different well-known brands that are merchandised neatly.

What stood out the most for us is the product shelf display from Eclipse, a brand from the leading chocolate, confections and chewing gum manufacturer Wrigley Company.

Retail merchandising is a key part of retail sales and marketing. It ensures that your customers have a positive experience when visiting – providing them with what they need, that they can find it easily and that the experience is comfortable and convenient for them.

It can take many forms and may serve different purposes, but all help sell products effectively in-store.

Retail merchandising shelves are one way to ensure that all these goals are met. They’re also an important way for you to get your brand message across to customers through graphics, signages and more.

Top 5 Challenges in Retail Shelf Space and How to Overcome Them

Challenge No.1: Competition

Competition is a great motivator. It keeps you on your toes and ensures you’re doing your best work. It also encourages creativity, innovation and improvement.

In retail, competition is fierce. There are many brands out there vying for your attention and spending money to get it. It’s important to understand the competition in order to stand out from the crowd.

Solution:

What’s the best way to beat the competition?

Be better than them, of course! But how do you do that?

There are a lot of things you can do, but one thing all the successful brands have in common is that they know how to use their shelves to their advantage.

When you’re deciding how to display your products in-store, it’s critical that you consider how the product packaging will look when it’s sitting on the shelf next to other brands. This will help ensure that customers can find and purchase your brand easily.

Challenge No.2: Limited Shelf Space

In-store items are often crowded together, leaving little room for other products. With so many products competing for their attention, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd.

This is especially true in the retail setting, where dozens of brands are competing for attention, shelf space and consumer loyalty.

Solution:

If you’re trying to get your products placed in a store, make sure it has a unique selling point that will help them stand out from other brands on the shelf.

In order to attract more customers, brands need to be different from each other in some way that is important to the customer.

We love how Eclipse utilised an on-shelf display that helps its products to blend into the designated space while also being able to stand out and merchandise effectively through shelf framing.

Challenge No.3: On-Shelf Availability

On-shelf availability is the percentage of products that are on store shelves, ready for purchase.

It is crucial because it impacts customer satisfaction, which in turn affects sales and profits. Customers can’t buy what they can’t find, and if they can’t find what they want when they want it, they’re likely to go somewhere else.

Solution:

To ensure that you don’t run out of stock, you need to plan ahead.

This means having accurate forecasts of sales and knowing when you’re likely to run out of stock on certain items.

It also means ensuring that you have enough stock in place so that you don’t run out unexpectedly — but not so much that it’s taking up valuable shelf space.

Challenge No.4: Unutilised Space for Advertising

Advertising lets people know about your business. When someone walks into the store, they may not know about your presence or what products you offer unless they’ve heard about them somewhere else first.

With the tight competition in the retail setting, it is essential to make sure that your marketing efforts are as effective as possible. In order to accomplish this goal, you need to make sure that your products are displayed in a way that will allow them to be seen by as many people as possible.

Solution:

Use retail merchandising shelves to make the most of your existing space.

With a well-designed retail merchandising shelf, you can create more room for your products while still keeping them organized and visible to customers.

This way, shoppers will know exactly where they are going and won’t have any trouble finding what they are looking for.

They also help in branding and marketing and make sure that customers have a memorable experience with your brand.

Challenge No.5: Missed Chance to Encourage Impulse Buying

Retail merchandising shelves are one of the most important areas where you can leverage in providing customers with special promotional offers.

And one of the biggest mistakes brands and retailers make is using them only as a place to promote single items instead of multiple offers together.

This leads to the missed chance of getting customers into buying mode right away without having to do much thinking about it.

Solution:

Brand managers and retailers can use shelf-based displays to offer their customers special offers.

For example, a retailer can offer a free item or discount to customers who buy two or more items of a certain type.

Offering discounts, freebies and on-pack gift with purchases like this is an effective way to increase sales and customer loyalty.

It also makes it easy for shoppers to find your offers and gives them an incentive to buy more than they might otherwise have bought.

Learn more about how else you can maximise your retail shelf space by tapping the image below:

To Conclude,

Retail merchandising shelves are one of the most effective ways to advertise your business. It’s not just about attracting customers to your store and increasing sales, but also about creating an overall impression of your brand.

The goal of retail merchandising shelves is to make customers feel like they’re walking into an experience that speaks to them personally, rather than just walking into a store and browsing through standard retail racks.

This kind of in-store experience can help build trust between customers and your brand, leading them to purchase more often at your location in the future.

The Role of ODM,

We hope that we are able to help you plan your next retail merchandising shelf system effectively with the key points we have rounded up above.

Are you interested in incorporating these retail shelf marketing ideas in your in-store merchandising?

If so, feel free to contact The ODM Group today. Together with our POS design agency, Mindsparkz, we will help you create a promotional tool that suits your brand!

While most of our projects involve high-quality marketing gifts and premium corporate gifts, we can also help with something simple yet practical such as these retail shelf solutions and other on-shelf accessories for maximised brand exposure.

Our team also specialises in product sourcing and manufacturing promotional giveaways and superb POS displays for the retail sector.

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