Item Results Card Details

One of the core principles of category monitoring involves the classification of relationships between two items.  It is this relationship which the consumer ultimately decides upon when choosing between two items. Below we'll explain what types exists, how they are helpful and what you can do with each of them.

Aura Color - Green Vs Red

If you look closely at the listing of cards, sometimes you will note that the aura or halo beneath the card is green.  Others times it will be red.  The significance of these colors is to all you to quickly signify that the green aura items are items you supply whereas the red aura cards are your commercial competitors in the marketplace.  The situation can be a little more complex occasionally where you are displaying multiple retailer results and supply items to multiple retailers which may compete with each other while all being items you supply to each retailer. In this instance, the items will still be green

Retailer Image

What seems like an obvious and simple component to each card is actually a very important component for researching about the item and its competitors.  The importance lies in the functionality of the left and right mouse click on the image.  Left click will take you to the item specific page for the retailer itself.  This is designed to provide a quick way to verify that everything is working properly etc.  Keep in mind - the price you see on retailer website may not match either the top or bottom price in the range - this is because the range is established by shopping across the country whereas your browser will provide your current location which is only one specific price.  The right click functionality opens up a context menu to give you access to the sorting and filtering and item specific research capabilities of the system - see the screenshot below left.

If you look closely, the menu is  divided into four parts by horizontal dividers. This is intentional. The first group give you access to common functions of the category monitoring service

• View Price Map - clicking this will give you a map and table of pricing as well as show you which direction the price was changed (if any) up/down.
• View Pricing History - clicking this will give you a 12 week running channel price trend and include items deemed directly comparable to it for comparison purposes over time.
• CompShop Reports - this is a quick link to a nationwide comparison shop report for this item vs its competitors across the active monitored retailers in your account.

The next section provides sorting options for the currently visible item detail cards. These sorts are based on information gleaned from the retailer website

• Sort by store count - this will sort descending by store count.
• Sort by Price Lo-Hi - sorts ascending by the minimum value in the price range for each item.
• Sort By Price Hi-Lo - sorts descending by the minimum value in the price range for each item.
• Sort By Retailer Rank - this sorts based on the average item list retailer rank value.  An item may appear higher or lower in a category page depending on regions etc, we capture each and average this.
• Sort by Star Rating - this sorts the item list descending by star rating.
• Sory By  Retail Category - This sorts items according to the retailer category they were found in.  This can be found at the bottom left of the cards.

The next section utilizes customer sales data to provide a way to quickly rank according to actual sales data over the last 12 weeks.

• Sort By Sales - sorts descending by sales, top items should appear first.
• Sort By Sales/Store - sorts descending by normalizes on store count.
• Sort By Sales Rank - sorts descending by the item's rank

The last section provides ways to meld competitors, view items which might not be listed as competitors but appear nearby on the same page for the retailer

• View vs. Competitors - this will filter to this item and bring in any competitors (both internal and external) to the results so you can see the competitive situation across the retail landscape.
• Add Association - this is a convenience - it will allow you to add a new association between this item and another item to build out the comparison map.
• View "Neighbors" - this will show this item along with items that were seen close by on the retailer website. These items have inherent relevance and if the items are not listed as competitors of any type, they probably should be.

Item Metric Details

Each of these metrics is designed to give some helpful data regarding the items place in the category vs its performance.

• 12 Wk Sales - this is as it sounds.  It is using your sales data to provide a 12wk total of retail sales.  We use 12wk because it is a middle-road time period that is most likely to follow the trending nature of "Top Sellers" on retailers websites.
• Item Sales Rank - this is the sales ranking among all the items returned in your search.  Note: if you search across multiple categories this is the rank across all of them.  If you limit it to one item, it will always show #1 because that is how many items its listed against.
• Units / Store - this gives you a measure of unit sales velocity as opposed to retail sales.
• Store Count - this is the number of stores the item is stocked in.  If we can get this data  from your sales data, its represented, otherwise we'll try to ascertain the number from the retailers websites.
• Items in Retailer Category - This is the number of items seen in the retailer's category page (shown bottom left by clicking on the link).  Its possible that we find items in multiple categories, so the count refers to the category we list it as shown in.
• Item List Rank - These three numbers provide the best, average, worst rank in which we saw the item on the category page.  A rank of 1-3 means it appeared at the top of the first page.  Most retailers pages default to 24-36 items per page, so a count lower than this means its not likely showing on the first page - in this case visitors are much less likely to come across the item.  These values change over time as we continue to monitor them.
• Last Seen - this is the last time we encountered the item in the marketplace.  This should generally be within the last 7-10 days at most.  If its more than that though, it may not necessarily be that something is awry - it could be the finish/color alteration of the item is not being presented recently in favor of another finish.
• Competition Classifications - The list below the horizontal bar may have one or more association types or it will say "Reference Item".  Tip: If it says reference item you can click the link to view all current competition associations for this item. When using the sort filter comparison menu - competing items will show how they compare to the reference item - this gives you a way to understand why they're being included and how the compare.