Checking to see which retailers in a certain region, state or market share point-of-sale data with Circana can help us to better understand why a brand or specific item may appear to be under-projected.
Circana attempts to “project for” retailers like Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and Sprouts, and others which don’t share their point-of-sale scan data with Circana. We've come across many situations where an item is entirely unaccounted for in a geography because it’s only selling in retailers like Whole Foods which don’t share their POS data. So, it’s often the case that when a geography appears to be under-projecting an item, the item collects the majority of its scans in retailers that don’t share their POS data with Circana.
We can check the Multi-Outlet Universe file to see if a retailer shares POS data with Circana. The Multi-Outlet Universe file has double asterisks by the name of all retailers which do share POS data with Circana. Retailers without double asterisks do not share their POS scan data with Circana, and yet, we still find those retailers listed in the Retailer Share file.
It's important to recognize that retailers listed in the Retailer Share file may not be sharing any POS data with Circana and how that could lead to an under-projection in a region, state, or market geography. Their presence on the list does not mean that Circana has access to their POS scan data. It only means that they comprise a large enough share percentage of grocery sales in that market to be included on the list, so Circana is taking them into account in their projection model. This means that Circana's projection model is likely set up to project what the sales for all items could be in retailers like Whole Foods, using data from retailers which do share POS data with Circana. So, some degree of under-projections and over-projections will inevitably occur for region, state, market geographies. Hopefully, solace can be found in knowing that everyone who uses this syndicated Circana data is working with the same numbers that we are.