Ugam Analysis Reveals Amazon.com Merchandising Assortment Gaps and Competitive Pricing Opportunities

NEW YORK, Aug. 19, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Ugam, a global leader in managed analytics, today announced its assortment intelligence analysis of two key sporting goods categories, revealing opportunities for retailers to compete with Amazon.com. Ugam's Assortment Intelligence solution identified gaps in Amazon's merchandising assortment and confirmed that the retail giant doesn't always have the lowest price on the most sought-after products.

To accurately analyze the assortment and pricing in these retail categories, Ugam focused on synthesizing a list of trending baseball bats and women's running shoes via its big data analytics capability and its proprietary algorithm for synthesizing consumer demand data. Ugam then used the list of key trending products to compare the assortments and pricing for several competitive online retailers, including Amazon.com.

Key Assortment Finding: Amazon may have the largest assortment, but it may not be the "right" assortment.

• Amazon had the largest assortments of both bats (729 SKUs) and women's running shoes (723 SKUs).
• But, Amazon's assortment was missing seven of the top 40 trending bats (17.5%) and 26 of the top 50 women's running shoes (52%).
• Also, 40% of Amazon's running shoe assortment is not top brands, a higher percentage than any other retailer.
• Most of Amazon's competitors had larger assortments of the most expensive bats and running shoes.
• Amazon had the largest assortments of the least expensive running shoes (those priced $75 or less) and least expensive bats (those less than $50) – almost twice as many as their nearest competitor in either category.

Key Pricing Finding: For key products, Amazon doesn't always offer the lowest price.

• Of the top 40 baseball bats, Amazon competed for sales against other retailers for 29 of them. Of those, Amazon had the lowest price (or tied for it) only 51% of the time (15 of 26).
• Of the top 50 running shoes, Amazon competed for sales on 21 of them, offering the lowest price (or tied for it) only 38% of the time (8 of 21).

What this means to retailers looking to compete with Amazon:

• While there is a perception that certain retailers have the "best assortment" or the "lowest prices," data analysis and insights can identify opportunities to compete without just cutting prices and compromising on margins.
• Consumer demand signals can help retailers identify trending products in order to carry more of what consumers want, and less of what they don't – improving their own efficiency.

"Comprehensive assortment analysis is an absolute necessity in today's information transparent and ultra-competitive retail industry," said IDC Program Director, Merchandise Strategies, Greg Girard. "Only by collecting the right product intelligence data and analyzing it for opportunities can retailers make fact-based decisions that create a competitive advantage. The insights from solutions like Ugam's Assortment Intelligence can help retailers focus their merchandising and pricing strategies and achieve better business results."

"Knowing everything about your customer is not enough. It's critical to collect and analyze competitor and consumer intelligence and blend them together to make informed merchandising decisions," said Ugam Chief Innovation Officer and Co-Founder, Mihir Kittur. "Non-traditional data is becoming increasingly important for identifying trending products – knowing what competitors are selling and what consumers are demanding, then understanding how to better compete on those products. Analytics is the key to successfully competing in this space."

Analysis Methodology

To conduct its analysis and identify meaningful insights, Ugam first used its proprietary Assortment Intelligence solution to identify trending products by collecting and analyzing consumer demand data, including Google search data, product reviews, and social signals (i.e., Twitter Tweets, Pinterest pins, Google +1s, Facebook likes, comments and shares).

Using the lists of the trending running shoes and baseball bats, Ugam aggregated detailed pricing information from Amazon, sports retailers and specialist retailers to determine who was selling those products and at what price. The full Assortment Intelligence analysis compiled key data points, including: assortment count, assortment uniqueness/overlap, assortment price profiles, assortment brand profiles, and pricing competitiveness.

• For a copy of Ugam's full Assortement Intelligence report, visit: http://www.ugamsolutions.com/resources/ebooks/ugam-reveals-merchandising-assortment-gaps-and-competitive-pricing-opportunities.

About Ugam's Assortment Intelligence Solution

Ugam's Assortment Intelligence solution generates insights for retailers about what products to keep, carry and drop. The solution delivers accurate, credible and precise data that helps identify assortment gaps, and enables retailers to make better, more systematic and timely assortment decisions. The Assortment Intelligence solution leverages new sources of data and predictive algorithms for merchandising intelligence and insights that help retailers differentiate their offerings and improve business results.

• For more information about Ugam's Assortment Intelligence solution visit: http://www.ugamsolutions.com/retailers/assortment-intelligence.

About Ugam
Ugam is a global leader in managed analytics that helps retailers, brands and market research firms transform big data into valuable insights. The company's unique managed services offering combines a proprietary big data technology platform with deep domain knowledge and analytics expertise to empower clients to make decisions that improve their business. For retailers, online marketplaces and brands, Ugam supports better merchandising, marketing and channel management decisions through the use of analytics. For market research firms and insight-based consultancies, Ugam offers a portfolio of solutions including end-to-end research operations, technology transitioning support, and data warehousing, visualization and reporting that enables them to better serve their clients. Five of the top 10 U.S. retailers, many of the world's largest brands and online marketplaces, and 13 of the top 25 market research firms work with Ugam because of its ability to deliver high-quality insights with unmatched customer experience.

Contact:

Veera Fernandes
Marketing & Communications Lead
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