With e-commerce on the rise, creating an impactful and compelling shopping experience is crucial to the success of any brick-and-mortar retailer. Yet, this requires a lot of forethought. From deciding the footpath customers should take to determining where product displays should go, optimizing the use of your retail space is not always easy. That’s where the POG can help.
POG stands for “planograms.” This visual retail merchandising tool helps retailers optimize the placement of products on their shelves. The ideal value of planograms is planning how to effectively use the physical space at your disposal, steer your shoppers, and ultimately increase customer purchases.
Read on to learn more about a POG and how it’s used in retail merchandising.
Table of Contents:
- What Does POG Stand For in Merchandising?
- How Does POG Retail Merchandising Work?
- Why Are Planograms Important to Retail Displays?
- How Can I Develop My POG Strategy With Great Northern Instore?
What Does POG Stand for in Merchandising?
The meaning of POG is plan-o-grams or, more commonly, planograms. Planograms designate the placement of products on shelves and other merchandising fixtures for the purpose of driving sales.
This visual merchandising tool often involves detailed drawings or schematics. Planograms can include an overhead view with a generalized layout of the store’s aisles, displays and point of sale. Then they get into the details with a map of the store fixtures that shows where specific products are placed in relation to other products. It also includes relevant fixturing and point of sale materials to help the shoppers locate and select products.
From national retailers to small shops, the goal of a planogram is to guide and focus your in-store merchandising efforts and increase customer purchases. The importance of visual displays cannot be underestimated. Humans process images far more quickly than text. Planograms ensure that proper thought and planning go into the design and execution of your merchandising plans. Attractively presenting a store’s offerings is crucial in motivating your customers to buy.
Large retail chains and grocery stores with many products and product categories have a lot of space to fill. They use POGs not only to improve visual appeal but also to create consistency between locations.
Planograms also help retailers decide where a product will fit on a certain set of shelves and improve product pairing suggestions. Smaller stores with limited space and fewer products may use a less comprehensive POG to maximize the space they have to work with. This planning is critical to sales performance. Having the right products in the optimal locations can lift sales.
How POG Retail Merchandising Works
A planogram is generally created by a store’s merchandising teams, with input from the advertising, marketing teams. Much input also come from trusted vendors that understand their distinct categories and shopper preferences. Many factors should go into a POG’s planning, including buying data, sales trends and consumer behavior.
Planograms can take many forms, from a simple diagram drawn on paper to a digitally rendered display, 3D model backed by data. The POG is then put to work in-store, where the store teams or installation teams ensure all products are displayed attractively as specified.
Detailed planograms will show retailers exactly where to place each item and how many products should be displayed.
A “reset” is a POG “makeover.” Regular resets keep the store’s aisles fresh and engaging. They’re also a good way to introduce new products or give the store a seasonal feel. During a reset, a new planogram helps guide the updated displays.
POGs can be revised as needed, such as when a product is discontinued or to keep the stock rotating.
Why Are Planograms Important to Retail Displays?
The purpose of using planograms is maximizing sales and optimizing space through the precision placement of products within a retail store. Let’s go into greater detail now about the advantages of utilizing POGs for planning out your store’s layout.
Precision Placement of Products
Planograms ensure all employees involved in restocking and merchandising organization are on the same page.
These specific guidelines help customers find exactly what they’re looking for, so items can be located and purchased. This is especially important for large retail chains with hundreds, if not thousands, of products and multiple locations.
By using a POG, each store has a similar layout with the flexibility of customized strategies to reflect local and regional preferences.
Maximize Sales
Planograms enable retailers to collect data and learn how their product placement and displays are working. By mapping out their exact location on shelves, you can gather actionable insights to optimize your visual merchandising planning process and product placement.
As time goes on, you’ll discover how product placement impacts your customers’ purchase behavior so that you can devise strategies to maximize sales. Identifying locations with high conversion rates allows you to showcase products you wish to feature.
With planograms, it’s also easier to map out customer routes from a strategic product placement perspective.
For example, items like milk and bread are generally placed in the far back of grocery stores. That’s because customers frequently shop only for these products. On the way back, they must walk past other items, potentially increasing impulse purchases. You can feature merchandise you want to sell or place complementary products nearby.
Maximize Space
Retail space is a valuable commodity. No matter how much your rental expenses may be, optimizing the use of space will help you run a more cost-effective business. Planograms play a key role in this organization process, as every area in your store has an allocated purpose.
When there’s a place for everything, this also allows more efficient inventory management. Planograms support streamlined organization. Your staff can more easily stay on top of stocking and product levels when everything is organized and where it should be.
For those who work with vendors or other third-party associates, POG guidelines specify how much space they’re responsible for. This creates a sense of ownership and accountability.
Develop Your POG Strategy With Great Northern Instore
If your current sales are not what you wish them to be, it’s time to up your POG game with a partner you can trust.
Our talented team at Great Northern Instore can provide you with valuable insights into shopper preferences and buying behaviors. Through a collaborative process, we work with your brand to develop planograms with optimized product placement and impactful merchandising display solutions. By using fixtures and point of sale messaging, you can create a more efficient space while assisting your shopper to find and select the right product. We then assist you by collecting data in-store to determine whether or not your POG strategy was successful.
For an unmatched customer experience and a completely turnkey approach, from insights to implementation, contact Great Northern Instore today.
