Retail sales data

Retail sales data measures what was actually sold: units and revenue by product, store, channel and period. Manufacturers use it to track share and distribution, retailers benchmark category performance, investors follow company sales between earnings reports, and planners use it for demand forecasting.

Typical fields

• Store or retailer, channel and region
• Product, SKU or GTIN and category
• Units sold and sales value
• Average selling price and promotion flag
• Period (day, week or month)
• Projection or panel weight, where data is projected

Sources and collection

The most granular data comes from retailer point-of-sale systems shared through data partnerships, often called sell-out or POS data. Other sources include loyalty programs, distributor shipments, and household or receipt panels that are projected to the total market. Each source has blind spots: retailer data covers only participating chains, and panels depend on how well the sample represents the population.

Delivery and pricing

Retail sales data is usually delivered weekly or monthly as files, cloud shares or a dashboard. It is mostly sold as an annual licence priced by category, geography, retailer coverage and granularity; store-level and SKU-level detail costs more than national totals. Some retailers restrict which competitors can see their data.

Before you buy

• Ask which retailers and channels are included and which are missing, especially discounters and online.
• Check whether figures are measured or projected, and how projection weights are built.
• Confirm the product hierarchy matches yours and how new SKUs are added.
• Check the restatement policy when retailers resend corrected data.
• Ask whether the licence permits sharing results with retail partners.