It’s not just how much you’re selling; it’s how fast. By capturing store-level data feeds directly from retailers, we’re able to measure velocity, which tells you the rate at which products are selling to measure performance. Want to know if consumers love what you make? Velocity can tell you. What’s the upside potential of winning wider distribution for a particular item? Velocity can tell you. And we can report below a national level, so you can monitor sales, distribution, and velocity by retailer, region, or market.
How It Works
Data collected at the store level shows how products sell in the locations where they are carried. More robust data can help you identify the most productive products in your portfolio and pinpoint the ones that deserve expanded distribution and marketing focus. Velocity is more effective than sales or share for assessing product performance, because it allows you to identify the fastest-turning products, not just those that are the highest selling because they have the best distribution. Store-Level Enabled Retail Tracking allows you to:
- Use point-of-sale data to build sales stories and marketing plans
- Analyze your business below a national level to customize programs to local markets
- Track distribution build of new products and scenario-plan the impact of expanding distribution
- Advise retailers on how to improve category assortment and recommend when one merchandising approach is insufficient.
Why It’s Better
Data processed at the store level enables NPD to offer distribution and velocity measures and analyze by Census regions, Census divisions, and DMAs (based on releasability). These new data assets change the actionablity of the data — allowing you to understand root causes and identify opportunities to grow or course-correct. Better data leads to better insights and decision-making in general merchandise categories.
To learn how we calculate velocity and how it can help you, read our complete guide to using the velocity metric to sell high-performing products.

