Use the Dollar Ranker With CWD and Sales Per Point vs CWD dashboards to compare your brands and items with competitors' products and identify opportunities.
Dollar Ranker with CWD
- After getting a sense of what’s going on trend-wise within a particular geography, Dollar Ranker with CWD is a good place to see how your brands and items fit into what’s happening, and to look out for specific, brand-oriented opportunities.
- So, landing on this dashboard, we’re looking at Brand Families, because the BRAND LEVELS parameter is set to the "Brand Family" level by default in the Cruncher. Brand Families are being ranked by their overall dollar sales in the past 52 weeks (or whichever timeframe you’ve selected). And remember, this ranking only applies to a single geography, whichever one is selected in the GEOGRAPHY filter.
- Your brand family will show up as a bright teal color. If your company produces multiple beverage types which fall into different segments (e.g., Craft Beer and Cider), you'll have multiple brand families, and each should show up (in that bright teal color) if you have each of the segments they belong to selected in the SEGMENT filter.
- The bar chart ranks by Dollar Sales, and also displays growth from a year ago and trend vs last year. The last two columns, Category Weighted Distribution (CWD) and Dollar Sales per Point of CWD, give a sense of how widely available your brand is in stores which generate the geography’s highest percentage of beer category dollars (CWD) in comparison with its efficiency/velocity (Dollar Sales per Point of CWD).
- So, from here we can drill down to the “BRAND” level. Using the BRAND FAMILY filter, check “ALL” and then uncheck it, to uncheck all boxes. Then, search for your brand family and check only its box, and click the “APPLY” button on the filter. Next, switch the BRAND LEVELS parameter from “BRAND FAMILY” to “BRAND” so that the bar chart displays only your brands.
- After narrowing down to only your brand family with the BRAND FAMILY filter, and then setting the BRAND LEVEL parameter to “BRAND”, you can see which of your brands has added the most incremental dollars, which ones have higher availability (CWD %), and which ones are moving with the greatest velocity (Dollar Sales per Point of CWD). And, with brands showing high efficiency/velocity but slightly lower availability, we can use that combination of factors to begin identifying some opportunities…
- As an exercise, with the BRAND LEVEL parameter set to “BRAND”, try to identify a brand which is showing impressive efficiency/velocity but slightly lower availability than some of the others. Then, try switching the BRAND LEVEL parameter to "SKU", and identify a specific package/UPC from that brand bucket which displays similar traits (for the sake of this example, let's say you've identified a 4pk of 16oz cans which is showing fairly high velocity despite having a low CWD%).
- Now, try using the PACKAGE SIZE GROUP filter to cut out everything except for 4pks of 16oz cans (or whichever package size group fits the SKU you've identified), leaving only the checkbox for "4ct 14-180z" selected, and click Apply. After narrowing down to only 4pks of 16oz cans, return the BRAND FAMILY filter to "All" and click apply. This should bring all 4pks of 16oz cans which are selling in the selected geography into the view, both yours' and competitors'.
- Next, in order to compare your 4pk with competitors' 4pks in a similar style orbit, we can take two different approaches (learn more about both approaches here). For this activity, we'll take the "Direct Approach". To begin, if you aren’t sure of your 4pk’s exact style classifications, jump over to the Item Audit dashboard and check to see what its Beer Style is (and what its Micro Style is). Then, return to the Dollar Ranker with CWD dashboard, and isolate its “Beer Style” using the BEER STYLE LEVEL VALUE filter. This way, you can view data for all 4pks which are in your 4pk's “Beer Style” orbit.
- If you’d like to investigate by “Micro Style”, or perhaps include several Micro Styles in your search which might be comparable to the particular brand you’re investigating, switch the BEER STYLE LEVELS parameter to “Micro Style”. Now you can select a single Micro Style (or select several comparable Micro Styles) using the BEER STYLE LEVEL VALUE filter.
Sales per Pt vs CWD
- On this scatter plot chart, the horizontal axis is showing CWD and the vertical axis is showing Dollar Sales per Point of CWD. Note that any selections you’ve made using filters/parameters on the Dollar Ranker with CWD dashboard have carried over to this dashboard. Since those filter selections have reduced the number of marks on the scatter plot (by only showing 4pks of 16oz cans in a particular style bucket), you should be able to switch the SHOW MARK LABELS parameter to “YES” to display the name of each brand/SKU on the chart without things being too cluttered.
- Moving your mouse arrow over the upper-left corner of the scatter plot, you’ll see a small toolkit appear. Click the arrow/carrot underneath the thumbtack symbol, and then click the pop-out magnifying glass tool. This should turn your mouse arrow into a small magnifying glass. Find the dark grey symbol which represents your 4pk, click just above and to the left of it, and hold-drag your mouse to select an area that captures your 4pk and also any 4pks which reside to the right of it and below it on the chart. Releasing the mouse, the view should now zoom to include only your 4pk and any 4pks which are residing to the right and below your brand’s symbol. Items to the right of you and below you on the chart are more widely available but pulling in less dollars per point and thus are potentially vulnerable.
- So, if you bring a snapshot of a zoomed-in view from this dashboard to a buyer, with your 4pk in the upper left-hand corner and other 4pks to the right and below yours, it can be both very compelling and effective. It identifies 4pks which are making less dollars per point of CWD even though they have greater availability to beer category customers than your item. By helping to envision a swap, you’ve presented a monetized solution. A buyer may be inclined to act if they can see how devoting a higher percentage of availability to your product would translate into increased overall revenue for them.