On-Shelf Availability in Retailing

Ensuring high On-Shelf Availability (OSA) is essential for retailers today. It is a measure of retailer performance. Out-of Stock is a major problem in retailing, as it leads to lost sales and decreased consumer loyalty. The term "Out-of-Stock" is used to describe a situation where a consumer does not find the product on the shelf, at the time he/she wishes to purchase it. The root causes leading to OOS include inventory inaccuracy, unexpected high demand, restock frequency and poor shelf monitoring. Yet, the possibilities for detecting and measuring an out-of shelf situation are limited, mainly involving visual shelf audits. Hence, the existence of an automatic method for detecting the products that are not on the shelf, would be valuable, offering an accurate view of the shelf availability to the store manager. The proposed solution, is a real-time application connected to a camera device that monitors the on- shelf availability of products and sends alerts to the store manager when products go out of shelf or are misplaced. The proposed solution, compared to the existing solutions, is cost effective, easy to implement and easy to use.