Why You Need a Market Sizing Analysis to Sell at Retail

When you're launching or growing a product at retail, assumptions are dangerous. Gut instinct might help you take the first step, but it won’t get your product on the shelf. And it won’t keep it there.

If you don’t know how big your category really is, who’s winning, and where volume lives across retailers and channels, you’re building a strategy on guesswork.

Guesswork doesn’t win in retail.

What Market Sizing Really Means

Market sizing means clarity. It means knowing the total opportunity available to your brand, so you can make decisions with confidence. It informs your distribution strategy, pricing, promotions, and where to invest.

Done right, market sizing answers key questions:

  • How big is the market I’m in?
  • Who owns the volume, and through which channels?
  • What is the real split between in-store and online sales?
  • Where are the gaps or white space I can target?

Answering those questions takes more than spreadsheets. Here’s how to break them down:

  1. Market Size:
    Start with all available POS and syndicated data. Then go deeper. Identify retailers not covered in your data, estimate their volume through in-store audits, online inventory checks, and public financials. Use triangulation to estimate total category size.
  2. Brand and Retailer Share:
    Audit top retailers both in-store and online to see which brands are prioritized and where they’re positioned. Combine that with pricing, SKU depth, and promotional cadence to estimate share of shelf and share of voice.
  3. Channel Breakdown:
    Use digital traffic data, sales rank history on Amazon and other ecomm platforms, and inventory levels to map out online demand. Cross-reference this with in-store placement and sell-through estimates to get a clear view of channel dynamics.
  4. White Space:
    Compare your brand’s current presence to the competitive set. Look for segments, formats, or regions where competitors are active but you’re not. Identify assortment gaps, price points, or consumer needs that are underserved.

This kind of analysis connects the dots. It doesn’t rely on a single source. It builds the full picture by blending what’s seen and what’s uncovered through field work, audits, and critical thinking.

The Problem with “Standard” Data

POS reports and syndicated data can be helpful, but they have blind spots. They might tell you what happened in a certain window or retailer. They rarely explain why. They miss channel shifts, competitive moves, emerging trends, and untracked sales.

That’s why a strong market sizing analysis pulls from multiple sources. It blends internal data, syndicated reports, in-store checks, e-commerce activity, and more. It gives you a full picture you can act on—not just something that looks good in a slide deck.

Why It Matters Now

Our Insights team will partner with you to design a study to help you better understand your consumers and their problems, and how your brand can win at retail. 

Looking to size up your market opportunity?

When internal data and syndicated research fall short, our market sizing service delivers the full picture. Learn how we can help

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