“Number of Stores Selling by SKU (Max)” is a measure found on the Columns and Rows dashboards which chain retailers may ask for: How many locations is a brand (or item) selling in? This measure is calculated by Circana.
By running simple calculations using other measures from the data, it can also become a rate of sale measure, to get dollars per store per week, units per store per week, or cases per store per week…. measures frequently important to retailers. Simply take total dollars, units, or volume, and divide that by Number of Stores Selling by SKU (Max).
How is Number of Stores Selling by SKU (Max) calculated? Any measure which has the word MAX in its name is going to be using whichever week in the timeframe had the highest number. For instance, with the measure “CWD (Max)”, if you've chosen 26wks as your timeframe, and an item shows CWD% of 65%, it means that the highest weekly CWD for that item was 65.
Like "CWD (Max)", Number of Stores Selling by SKU (Max) is a number that comes in directly from Circana, so we don't have visibility into the projections/calculations being used by Circana to reach that number for each week. But, we do know that it's using the Max calculation to give us whichever week in the timeframe had the highest number of stores selling. At the SKU level, this is pretty straightforward (e.g., "this 12pk sold in X number of stores"), but what about at the brand level? At the brand level, this measure is calculated by first finding whichever SKU from each week had the highest number of stores selling.
For example, let's say we're looking at a brand called Spooky IPA, which is sold in a 6pk and a 12pk, over a 2-week time period.
Week 1:
Spooky IPA 6pk's number of stores selling is 5
Spooky IPA 12pks number of stores selling is 3
So, the highest number of stores selling for this week is 5
Week 2:
Spooky IPA 6pk's number of stores selling is 7
Spooky IPA 12pks number of stores selling is 3
So, the highest number of stores selling for this week is 7
For the entire 2-week time period, the Number of Stores Selling by SKU (Max) for the Spooky IPA Brand is 7.
What does this mean for the calculation at the brand level? In Week 2, the Spooky IPA 6pk sold in seven stores and the 12pk sold in three stores. If we're looking at data for the Spooky IPA brand as a whole, the Number of Stores Selling by SKU (Max) for that week would be 7. The Spooky IPA brand most likely sold in seven stores that week, because chances are good that the three stores which the 12pk sold in are the same stores which the 6pk sold in, making 7 an accurate total for the Spooky IPA brand as a whole.
The caveat: of course, it is possible that 1 or more of the 3 store locations the 12pk sold in are different stores from the group of 7 stores that the 6pk sold in. If so, the calculated Number of Stores Selling of 7 for the Spooky IPA brand would be low, as the brand could have actually sold in 8-10 stores.