Cross-merchandising is a powerful retail merchandising strategy that places different product categories next to or near each other to highlight how they complement each other. For example, placing journals and notebooks next to or near pens and pencils on your store floor would be cross-merchandising. In turn, this subtly influences your customers to make additional purchases by providing a ready-made solution to your customers. Since the items they need are grouped closely to each other, they can just grab what they need and go! Cross-merchandising is a highly effective way to merchandise your products to customers and increase your sales. Keep reading to learn some more tips and tricks you can use to bolster your cross-merchandising strategy today.
Tip 1 – Theme Your Cross-Merchandising
Centralizing your cross-merchandising efforts around a theme is a great tip to employ in your strategy. Think of your customers’ needs and the ways they could use your products to help them out in their daily schedules, then use this to build cross-merchandised themes. Place binders, notebooks, and pens close together for a theme of classroom essentials. Conversely, group headphones, chargers, and desk accessories together for an all-in-one tech solution cross-merchandising strategy.
Tip 2 – Contrast Merchandising
Contrast merchandising is a method of cross-merchandising that places contrasting items next to each other to make both groups of products stand out. Contrast merchandising helps products stand out in unique ways by catching your shoppers’ attention and making them stop to look at what’s being displayed. An easy way you can use contrast merchandising is by placing snack items next to non-edible products like glue or tape. The stark contrast between one group of products and the next will surprise your customers and help you move through inventory!
Tip 3 – Secondary Placement
Secondary placement is an ingenious method of cross-merchandising that maximizes convenience for your shoppers. Secondary placement involves placing a product in a separate location outside of its main area. Let’s say you have a big dump-bin of 2-pack gel pens as their main location, but you also place some of the gel pen packs on clip-strips next to your journal section or by an impulse snack area. Secondary product placement catches your customers’ attention at different intervals during their shopping experience and serves to remind them to pick up smaller items they might have forgotten about while walking through a store.
Sources
https://ailet.com/articles/how-to-use-cross-merchandising-in-retail/
https://fitsmallbusiness.com/what-is-cross-merchandising/#contrasting
https://www.scubefixtures.com/blog/cross-merchandising-guide
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