Research your products. Maybe gum sells well at the checkout, but maybe it doesn’t. Just because large grocery stores put it here doesn’t mean it’s going to work in all stores. What you’ll have to do is perform a split test. Put two different types of products that you suspect will sell well right at the front cash register.
Monitor sales of these items. How well do they sell? Which one outperforms the other? If you’re using an EPOS system, you can automatically track sales and know which one you should be selling more of and which one you can probably pull.
So, if you pit gum against a particular candy bar, and the candy bar wins, remove the gum from the checkout area. But, don’t stop there. Keep testing the candy bar against other items to see if you can do better. And, don’t rely on just unit sales. If your gum costs less than half of your candy bar, more gum sales could still not add up to the total dollar amount of the candy bar sales. Even if the candy bar sells fewer units it could bring in higher profits.
Vendors are an excellent source of information. Use them. They’ve probably already done a lot of research on their product – they have an incentive to. So, ask them where their product sells best, and under what conditions. They’ll be able to tell you.
If you own a clothing store, for example, and you sell accessories, you may find that these don’t sell well at the register. Instead, the vendor may be able to prove that the best sales come from placing them next to the clothing that they are intended to be paired with. This kind of information could save or make you hundreds, or thousands, of dollars so pay attention to others’ experience and data.