What is a planogram in merchandising?
If you walk into your local Tesco or Wal-Mart store to shop for “Detergents” or “Breakfast Cereals” or other similar products, you will see dozens or even hundreds of such products on the shelves. Which product is placed where and how many units of the same product are placed next to each other is in most cases not a coincidence: a lot of analysis and planning goes into designing what products to place where and how. The “output” of these planning are the so-called “planograms”, which are essentially pictures showing which product should go where on the shelves. Specialists working at the head office of retailers use special planogram software (such as Apollo, Spaceman or Intactix) to create these planograms and send them to the stores where they serve as “instructions” for the people who are responsible for filling the shelves.
