Creating The Optimum Assortment Using Good, Better, Best

Creating the perfect assortment means juggling a number of different considerations. These tips are based on project experience with our clients

  1. Follow a good, better, best philosophy. Use customer, market and competitive analysis to determine your first assortment.
  2. Then focus initially on the better. This is where you expect to take the bulk of your money, typically 50% or so of sales. Suppose you are selling ladies tops. Analyze your product sales to determine which is the best-selling price point for tops. Also, which is that which matches the median selling top. Pay the most attention to the styles around the median and the best-selling price point. Get these styles right first then focus on the rest of the better section. This will address the biggest part of your sales.
  3. After that turn your attention to the good, or entry level price, points. These are critical in getting traffic into the store and giving the right price image. Focus on product with competitive prices which represent good value to attract consumers in. Make sure though, that the step up from good to the lower priced better products isn't too great. This helps the consumer transition to the price points you really want them to buy.
  4. Finally, look at the best. These are the products which represent the very best quality at a decently higher price. Occasionally, you can add one very expensive product to help create an impression of value in the rest of the assortment.

Have you tried this approach?  What works best for you? 

If you’d like more best practice advice check out our Merchandise and Assortment Planning e-learning course.

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Jeans on a store shelf
Posted by Brian Hume
20th February 2018

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