The BRAND LEVELS Parameter can be used to find the Category Weighted Distribution (CWD) percentage for a single SKU, an entire brand, or an entire brand family. How are CWD percentages calculated for each brand level?
The “weighted” aspect of Category Weighted Distribution tends to raise questions, and it’s beneficial to seek a clear understanding and be able to explain it to others. Find a full explanation of CWD here. CWD indicates a BRAND FAMILY, BRAND, or SKU’s level of availability in a single market. When CWD is calculated for an item or a brand in the Beer category, Circana has a view into each store they are sampling data from in the geography and are able to assign a certain percentage number to each store, based upon how many Beer category dollars that store contributes to the geography's total sum of beer category dollars. In a given week, if an item scans at only one of the stores Circana is sampling, but that store alone generates 25% of the total Beer category revenue for that geography, the item has a 25% CWD for that week.
To summarize, if an item (SKU) has been given placement in stores which generate higher Beer category revenue than other stores in the same market, it will have higher visibility/availability to Beer category customers and thus, a higher CWD % when it scans at those stores in a given week.
When CWD % is calculated at the BRAND level, which will often take more than just one SKU into account, the CWD % can be higher than it is for a single SKU in that brand bucket. More SKUs can mean more store placements. The same goes for CWD % at the BRAND FAMILY level, where all SKUs in the brand family's catalogue are bundled together in the calculation.
In essence, a group of SKUs will generally be available in a higher number of a geography's weighted stores and, as a group, will represent a higher % of the weighted market than a single SKU.
Here's an example to illustrate the way this works:
If a geography is comprised of 10 stores, and these 10 stores have collectively generated 10 million in beer category revenue over the last 26 weeks...
If a single SKU in your catalog, the "Penguin Pilsner" 6pk, has achieved placement at just one of these stores (the one which generated 2 million dollars), it means that the 6pk achieves 20% CWD for any week that it scans and records dollar sales.
But, for the sake of this example, let’s pretend that you also offer a 12pk of Penguin Pilsner, which has achieved placement in the $3M store and also the $1M store. This would mean that Penguin Pilsner could have a CWD of 60% at the BRAND level, because Penguin Pils could scan in 3 stores which collectively generate $6M of the total $10M for this geography. The CWD % for the BRAND FAMILY as a whole could be even higher, if other SKUs in your catalogue have placements at additional stores where Penguin Pils isn’t being sold.
A final note: filtering on product attributes doesn’t apply to CWD at the Brand level or Brand Family level because those CWD percentages come in directly from Circana. In other words, InfoSource does not calculate CWD for a brand using the CWD percentages for the SKUs which roll up into that brand, so filtering on attributes like package size that are applied only at the SKU level will not work for Brand or Brand Family level CWD. At the Brand or Brand Family level, CWD is fixed and will only be affected by geography and timeframe.