Question: How likely is it that a shopper encounters an off-shelf event?

Simple Answer: It’s almost guaranteed!

Good Answer:  It depends on the size of the shopping basket.  The more things a shopper buys, the more opportunities they have to find an off-shelf event.  If the shopper goes into store for a single item, and assuming the industry average on-shelf availability rate of 92%, then they have an 8% chance of finding an off-shelf. 

As the number of items on the shopping list increases, the likelihood of finding at least one off-shelf event increases rapidly (below).  

With a shopping list of just 20 items, there is already more than an 80% chance that at least one of those items is off-shelf.

So, how likely is it that a shopper encounters an off-shelf event?  It’s almost guaranteed.

This post is the sixth in a series on On-Shelf Availability.  Next week , we'll start to look at how off-shelf detection systems work by monitoring point of sale data.  Watch this space !