how assortment strategies work
essentially a product assortment strategy is a retail industry sales tool with the concepts of depth and breadth at its core however not all retailers will be able to use both components of this strategy at the same time an assortment strategy can have many layers of sub and related strategies as each store will need to tailor the strategy to address its own particular needs and goals a deep assortment the opposite of a narrow assortment of products means that a retailer carries a number of variations of a single product a wide variety the opposite of a narrow variety of products means that a retailer carries a large number of different kinds of products an assortment strategy is not one size fits all it needs to be customized to respond to a business s parameters retailers face a trade off when determining an assortment strategy choosing both a wide variety and a deep assortment of products simultaneously requires a large amount of space and is typically reserved for big box retailers stores with smaller spaces may choose to specialize in a certain type of product and offer customers a variety of colors and styles other stores may offer a deep assortment of products but a narrow variety one reason why a 7 eleven private since 2005 might carry just one brand of canned cat food for example while a kroger nyse kr likely would have the space to stock 12 brands of canned cat food if it chose to originally assortment strategy referred only to brick and mortar stores because the strategy s components of depth and breadth had a lot to do with physical space and the visual and tactile interaction between consumer and product recently though all sales venues brick and mortar click and mortar and e tailing have used varieties of the strategy to gain competitive advantage by grouping together items that they believe will appeal to certain types of customers retailers may fine tune their assortment strategies to target consumers demographic profiles if a retailer wants to attract customers who are new parents for example it might fill the shelves with infant apparel from trendy brands along with toys bedding and other products new parents need a strategic selling toola strategically arranged product assortment can upsell customers on supplemental items as they search for the item that brought them to the store grouping related items together strategically whether or not they are necessities is a common way to stimulate impulse buying potential disadvantages of assortment strategiesalthough the depth of product assortment may help attract customers there are certain caveats to relying only on an assortment strategy if items in an assortment are placed incorrectly the demand for these products may vary drastically if less popular items are mixed in with popular items for example they could detract from the more popular items appeal or if the assortment is too vast customers may have difficulty finding the item they are seeking overwhelming shoppers with too many buying options can be counterproductive and discourage customer engagement 