Resources
Frequently asked questions
Straight answers on Shelftrak, The Perfect Store, and how the pieces fit.
Shelftrak basics
What is Shelftrak?
Shelftrak is a retail intelligence platform that measures how well stores actually present a brand: availability, visibility, price and promotion. A field agent photographs the shelf through the Shelftrak app; VISTA, Shelftrak’s computer vision engine, reads the fixture down to SKU level; automated quality checks and trained retail specialists verify the results; and each store appears in a dashboard as a compliance score with the photographic evidence attached.
Who uses Shelftrak?
Shelftrak is used by FMCG and drinks brands, retailers and field marketing teams — typically category managers, trade and shopper marketing, commercial directors and field sales leaders. Brands use it to check the space, pricing and promotions they agreed with retailers; retailers use it to check execution standards across their own stores; field teams use it to replace manual audit forms with a single shelf photo.
What problems does Shelftrak solve?
Shelftrak measures the difference between what was planned for a store and what is actually on the shelf: lost facings, missing must-stock lines, incorrect prices, promotions that were never set up, and empty shelves. Because stores are re-audited on a regular cycle, these gaps show up in the current audit wave — early enough to fix.
How do brands know what’s happening on shelves in stores they don’t own?
Three common routes: their own field teams visiting stores, third-party audit providers, or retailer-supplied data — each with trade-offs in cost, coverage and objectivity. Shelftrak combines the first two: any field team (the brand’s or Shelftrak’s) photographs the fixture through the app, and the analysis, verification and scoring are done centrally so results are objective and comparable across stores.
How is Shelftrak different from POS or panel data?
POS and panel data record what sold; they can’t show why something didn’t sell. Sales data won’t reveal that a promotion was never set up, a facing was lost to a competitor, or a price tag was wrong for three weeks. Shelftrak measures the physical shelf itself, which makes it a complement to sales data rather than a replacement: the shelf explains the sales line.
What’s the difference between a retail audit and mystery shopping?
A retail audit measures physical compliance — is the product present, priced correctly, displayed as agreed. Mystery shopping measures the shopper experience — staff knowledge, service, recommendation behaviour. They answer different questions: use an audit to verify execution, mystery shopping to test service. Shelftrak does the former: photographic, SKU-level measurement of the shelf, scored consistently so stores can be compared.
How do I get started with Shelftrak?
Request a demo. From there you agree target stores, standards and reporting, and choose whether your field teams or Shelftrak’s network captures the data.
Speaking Shelftrak — the terms, in plain English
What is the Travel Retail Quarterly Tracker?
The Travel Retail Quarterly Tracker is Shelftrak’s ongoing audit of 100+ duty free stores across 70+ airports, measured every quarter on one consistent global standard. Subscribers get dashboard access to SKU-level data on share of space, pricing, promotions and compliance, so they can see where execution is strong, where it’s slipping, and which way the trend is moving, wave on wave.
What is “The Perfect Store”?
The Perfect Store is a widely used retail execution concept describing a store where a brand’s availability, visibility, pricing and promotions are all executed exactly to plan. Shelftrak turns the concept into a rigorous measurement: each store gets a Perfect Store score based on verified shelf photographs, re-measured regularly, so how close any store is to “perfect” — and whether it’s getting closer — is an objective tracked number.
What is a Perfect Store score?
A Perfect Store score is a single number rating how completely one store executes a brand’s agreed standards — planogram, must-stock lines, pricing, promotions and positioning. Shelftrak calculates it from verified shelf photographs, so every point on the score has photographic evidence behind it, and re-measures monthly so improvement or decline is visible within one cycle.
What Perfect Store score should a brand target?
There’s no universal target, because scores are only comparable within one methodology — a “90” from one provider isn’t a “90” from another. The practical approach is relative: benchmark your stores against each other and against the category, target the gap between your weakest locations and your best, and track the trend wave on wave. Shelftrak’s benchmark exists precisely to make those comparisons like-for-like.
What is the Perfect Store Growth Programme?
The Perfect Store Growth Programme is Shelftrak’s structured advisory offering. It uses monthly measurement to work the four pillars — space & assortment, distribution, price & promotion, and execution excellence — and turns the gaps into a prioritised, store-by-store action plan. Worked together, the four pillars unlock up to 20% total sales growth. (Source: multiple GTR and retail studies, CiR, Shelftrak, Nielsen.)
What’s the difference between the Tracker and the Growth Programme?
The Travel Retail Quarterly Tracker is the measurement layer: SKU-level shelf data across the travel retail estate, updated every quarter. The Perfect Store Growth Programme is the improvement layer: category experts turn shelf data into quantified opportunities and a prioritised, store-by-store action plan. In short, the Tracker tells you where you stand; the Programme is the structured work of improving it.
What is Shelfcheck?
Shelfcheck is Shelftrak’s bespoke store audit service. Audit any store in any location: shelf photos captured in the Shelftrak app — by your own reps, brand ambassadors or store staff, or by Shelftrak’s field teams — become verified SKU-level compliance, pricing and space data within hours. Audits are scheduled to match your planning cycle, and most run on a monthly or weekly cadence, so issues are flagged and turned into prioritised corrective actions while there’s still time to fix them.
What is VISTA?
VISTA — Visual Intelligence System for Tracking and Analysis — is Shelftrak’s proprietary computer vision engine. It turns a shelf photo into SKU-level data in seconds: products, facings, positions, prices and promotional materials, matched against a proprietary database of retail SKUs. Results then pass through automated quality checks and review by trained retail specialists before they reach a dashboard.
What are SDR, MSL and SoS?
They’re Shelftrak’s shelf economics metrics. SDR (SKU Density Ratio) measures SKU and facing concentration against physical space — how productively each metre of fixture is used. MSL (Must Stock Lines) compliance checks that agreed priority SKUs are present in every store, every wave. SoS (Share of Space vs Market Share) compares the shelf space a brand holds with the market share it holds, to show whether it is over- or under-spaced relative to its sales.
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