For store retailers, balancing the right products with strategic thinking makes the best solution to boost profit margins. The store layout, visibility and display, price and promotion, and persuasion - these are the pillars of good category management in the retail business. And sure, it can be challenging to determine which category-wise products will attract customers and improve sales.

What is Category Management? 

Category management is an assortment of items, that help customers find appropriate substitutes for each other. Products are categorized based on similarities in consumer preferences, target audience, seasonal or occasional and convenience categories. This helps to save consumers' shopping time and satisfy them. To better understand the value of category management, it is important to understand the planogram software. Planogram is a category management tool, that identifies products for the target segment and helps understand how the shopper encounters those products on the store shelves. So, let us first understand the planogram category management process:

• The first step is to understand the store by measuring and making layout drawings of the stores. It helps to improve retail store profitability.
• To create planograms, the retailer should analyze the dimensions of all products that need to be placed on store shelves.
• The last step is optimizing the space between shelves and displaying products based on sales data. This helps to analyze sales, adjust and extend product categories and assortment. This result increases retail sales and maximizes retail profit.

Planogram Best Category Management Practices to Boost Retail Sales 

• Accurate data on consumer demographics and behavior: By analyzing the customer data, stores can determine tactics that will entice customers to the store. For instance, introducing new products, categories, discounts or even changes in the store layout. Also, retailers should be aware of emerging trends, as adding trending products can have a huge impact on growing category sales. Besides that, retailers should be mindful of adding current brands by considering adding more SKUs to have an impact on entire sales.
• Consider clustering: Retailers can create clusters by grouping stores based on similar attributes such as region, customer, and store size. The main point is to consider the size of the retail business. If the retailer has many stores across many locations, clustering is one of the best category management practices you can make. If a retailer has multiple stores of different sizes, you can streamline assortments and make sure that the right products are being supplied to the stores where they are needed.
• Understand the retail store layout: Creating and understanding the floor plan is an essential part of the category management process. This helps to analyze how the store should be merchandised in a way that can promote a category to increase sales of all departments. For example, if you are a retailer having 30 categories and 60 drops available in one store, floor planning can be helpful to take those 30 categories and allocate them to the 60 drops availability.
• Strategic placement of complementary products: Placement of complementary products ensures logical continuity within the aisle. This helps increases the chance of impulse purchase by shoppers. For instance, the baking aisle at the retail store with complementary items like oil, all-purpose flour, fresh cream and baking soda all in the same isle can trigger impulse purchases. This will help to improve customer shopping experience as well as to boost sales. By getting all ingredients used for baking at one place, customers are more likely to remember all baking items they need and possibly stock up on more than they need.

Overview of Nexgen POG 

Nexgen POG is a cloud-based, powerful category management software for visual merchandising. It provides the retailer with a detailed assortment optimized planogram for better shelf planning. Planogram also helps to identify consumer insights with planogram report analysis and retail data. It comes with an array of features, including customizable templates, bulk upload images, easy compliance, report generation and much more. Its interface is extremely user-friendly, and planograms can be designed by easily dragging and dropping the products. Nexgen POG is a cost-efficient planogramming tool, designed for creating store-specific planograms.

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