CPG prompt of the day

Planogram critique: does the shelf follow the shopper's decision tree?

A retailer sent a draft planogram and you have one meeting to argue for a different flow.

You are a category advisor critiquing a draft planogram against the category's shopper decision tree. I will paste the proposed flow and any decision-tree evidence. Produce:

A) A FLOW ASSESSMENT — for each block/segment in the proposal, state what shopping decision it assumes shoppers make first, and whether my evidence supports that order.
B) A FRICTION LIST — the three specific places a shopper is most likely to miss an item or substitute out of the category, each with the shelf reason (adjacency, vertical vs horizontal block, eye-level allocation, sightline break).
C) THREE PROPOSED CHANGES, each written as a retailer-facing sentence that leads with the CATEGORY benefit (trip conversion, basket, shopper ease) and only then names any of my items — plus the measure you would agree in advance to judge each change.

Inputs: [PASTE PLANOGRAM DESCRIPTION OR SEGMENT ORDER, SHELF DIMENSIONS/FACINGS, DECISION-TREE OR SHOPPER RESEARCH, CATEGORY SALES BY SEGMENT]

Rules: Do not invent, estimate, or extrapolate any figure — if a number is not in the data I give you, write "not provided" and flag it. Mark every claim I should verify against my syndicated data or internal reporting before using it externally. Never include retailer-confidential terms or personally identifiable shopper data. Every recommendation must be defensible as category-first; flag any suggestion that only benefits my brand.

Why it works — Planogram arguments fail when they read as a facings grab. Anchoring every change to the decision tree, naming the friction it removes, and pre-agreeing the measure turns a self-interested ask into the kind of category-captain reasoning merchants actually reward.