How to Plan Your Merchandise Buys

The basic information needed at the category level includes item count, demand and space. With these data you can demonstrate relationships that will guide decisions for increasing or decreasing your assortment based on customer performance. Consider the example outlined in the chart “How to Determine Optimal Product Assortment” (below). By looking at comparable history, we see that Category A had 10 percent of the total items, generated 10 percent of the total demand and occupied 10 percent of the total space.