Product assortment refers to the variety of products and services that a company or a retailer makes or offers to the consumers. It is the collection of products and services that a business offers its customers.
Characteristics of Product Assortment
There are four main characteristics of product assortment. They include:
Breadth – This refers to the product lines that a retailer or manufacturer has in production. For example, a vehicle manufacturer may have product lines for SUVs, Buses and trucks
Length – the length of a company’s products is the number of goods in individual product line. For example, the same automaker can have five models of SUVs, four models of buses and three truck models.
Depth – depth refers to varieties of the same or similar products within a product line. For example, the automaker can have a standard and basic version for each of the types of trucks and buses but have a third luxury version for the SUV types.
Consistency – consistency in product assortment refers to how the products lines or products relate to one another in retail For example, the trucks and buses may be consistent with each other as they are both commercial grade automobiles, but the SUV would not fit or be consistent considering that it is a consumer vehicle.
Mixing – Assortment Strategies
An assortment strategy concentrates on the product depth and breadth. It is the type and number of goods offered by retailers or companies. An assortment strategy can be hard to pin down. When a retailer chooses a wide variety and deep assortment at the same time, then the overall products will demand a lot of space and investment. This type of strategy is usually left for the bigger retailers. Smaller retailers may choose to concentrate on a certain type of good or deep assortment with a narrow variety:
Deep assortment – In deep assortment, a retailer stocks many varieties of a single of limited products. Deep assortments make retailers super specialist and it minimizes any space for other types of products. Deep assortments may involve carrying a large variety of colors, add-ons and the like. Category killers are deep assortment retailers who stock so much variety of a certain good(s) such that other retailers can’t compete.
Scrambled assortment is an assortment strategy where a company or business carries or stocks goods unrelated to its main line of business in a bid to attract additional clients.
