SmartSpotter has been crowdsourcing over half a million smartphones in over 10 countries to offer instant visibility inside stores everywhere. With operations in Australia, Belgium, Czech Republic, Colombia, Croatia, Ireland, Nederland, Portugal, Slovenia, and United Kingdom, we continue working with very important brands, building a strong network within the FMCG industry as well as setting and maintaining standards and best practices.
Vege Chips are the market leader in producing Gluten Free chips Australia wide, created over 30 years ago. Smartspotter continues to help the business grow and maintain its leadership position, using the power of crowdsourcing to collect all the information they need in-store in real-time and with quality, transparent and unbiased results.
Avoiding Out-Of-Stock Situations
Avoiding stockouts is perhaps on the top list of retailers and brands' preoccupations, and for a good reason. Not only do they lead to lost sales, but out-of-stocks also result in reduced customer satisfaction and lower conversion rates.
The situation
Vege Chips had an agreement with one of Australia's biggest retailers to display 20,000 cartons of various SKUs of Vege Chips on Front Gondola-ends across all supermarkets for a promotional period of 7 days.
The objective was to track the implementation of the promotion in real-time to ensure the execution was successful and according to plan. We needed to check if any store was found running low on stock or was non-compliant with the terms negotiated, taking immediate and accurate action if that was the case.
The challenge?
In order to increase promotional effectiveness, speed and quality of the data here were critical, as we had to gather the information needed in real-time so we could have it available on the first day of the promotion.
The solution
Using the power of crowdsourcing, SmartSpotter managed to visit 200 supermarkets across Australia in less than one day.
Our unrivalled network of field reporters collected insights from 200 stores in a matter of hours, helping keep the retail execution perfect.
Vege Chips' Team monitored in real-time every time-stamped and geo-located visit and accessed live data and photographic evidence to deploy an accurate and synchronised action plan. All powered by SmartSpotter's dashboard, which is supported by an in-house development team), business intelligence and AI integrations.
The results
Hours after the commencement of the promotion, SmartSpotter showed that 45.39% of the stores visited either had no gondola-ends with the promotion, were out of stock or had low stock levels of Vege Chips.
Products Not Found
Panoramic pictures of all gondola-ends were provided in those stores where no promotion was found to ensure quality.
Low stock / Out of stock
Stores with critical stock levels were found using photographic evidence and measuring on-shelf availability & facings count per SKU
The Outcome
Hours after the promotion was live, the Vege Chips team provided valuable, unbiased, and fact-based information to the retailer. The retailer and the Vege Chips team took immediate action to:
- Fix the non-compliant stores (No gondola-end present)
- Place an additional order of Vege Chips
That said, in a matter of hours, Vege Chips was able to place an incremental order of 6,300 cartons, generating 31.5% increase in the original order to stock the stores with low/no stock. That is 31.5% more sales for Vege Chips and the retailer.
We provided neatly packaged into real-time, automated and shareable analytics that empowered the brand and retailer to take effective action, avoiding out of stock situations that could potentially damage the brand and the implementation of the promotion.
If you want to improve promotional execution and compliance, don't hesitate to contact us!
