Gap Analysis Report Basics

For the Gap Analysis Report, there are three different types of reports which can be generated from the single criteria page:

• Buying Gaps: Returns titles stocked and sold in the comparison market but not the home market. This report can check for markets that might be missing out on title sales.
• Inventory Performance: Returns titles sold in the comparison market but not sold in the home market even though they were stocked there. This report can check for under-performing inventory.
• Bestseller Gaps: Returns bestselling titles in the comparison market and their sales and inventory numbers for in the home market.

Select the appropriate report tab.

Market Selections

1. Select a home market. Click the arrow to open the drop-down menu. Any market that you have peer access to will appear there. Markets with an asterisk have insufficient inventory data, usually because one or more of the retailers contributing to that aggregate don't supply inventory data, and cannot be used as a home market in the Inventory Performance report. 
2. Select a comparison market to compare against your home market. The default setting is All Markets. Click the arrow to open the drop-down menu. Any market that you have peer access to, except the selected home market, will appear there.
3. Optional: Select any additional markets you may be interested in seeing sales and inventory for. You will only see your own sales within these markets. A maximum of 8 markets can be selected.

Reporting Period Selection

Note: The selected reporting period determines the number of weeks used to calculate Stock Turn numbers on the results page. Stock Turn is only available when a multi-week reporting period is selected.

1. Select a Reporting Period by choosing from the drop-down menu.

• • Buying Gaps: The default setting is Current Week.
    • Other options include:
    • Last 2 Weeks
    • Last 3 Weeks
    • Last 4 Weeks
    • Custom (The default display for Custom Sales Period is the most recent week. To select a different time period, click on the date boxes or calendar icons to enter the starting and ending date of the reporting period.)
      
      
      
  • Inventory Performance: The default setting is Most Recent Week.
    • Other options include:
    • Last 13 Weeks
    • Last 26 Weeks
    • Last 52 Weeks
    • Year to Date (This will display data for the calendar year from the first week of data for the year.)
    • Custom
      
      

• • Bestseller Gaps: The default setting is Most Recent Week. It has all the same Reporting Periods as Inventory Performance, in addition to a Lifetime option. Lifetime will display all data received for the selected comparison market starting from the week that market began submitting data to SalesData.
    
    

Note that if you select a Custom reporting period that covers 208 periods (weeks) or more, the Run Report button will turn grey and a message will pop up informing you that this report is only available through the download option. While your report is downloading you are free to create other reports and use SalesData. A downloading icon will pop up in the lower left-hand part of your screen while the report is running. To minimize this simply click on the arrow icon in the top right-hand corner. For more information on the Download Manager, check out the help page for it here. 

Row Limit

The default number of rows in your report is 100. To show more report rows, open the drop-down list and select another option.

Note that if you select 30,000 or 50,000 rows the Run Report button with turn grey and a message will pop up informing you that this report is only available through the download option. While your report is downloading you are free to create other reports and use SalesData. A downloading icon will pop up in the lower left-hand part of your screen while the report is running. To minimize this simply click on the arrow icon in the top right-hand corner. For more information on the Download Manager, check out the help page for it here.

Decide How to Compare the Data (Advanced Criteria)

• Units sold: You can limit your search results to a specific number of units sold for the titles displayed in the Comparison Market using the minimum and maximum text boxes. You can also choose to fill out only one text box, filtering the titles with units fewer/greater than the maximum/minimum inserted unit number.

• Pub date: Select the Pub Date text boxes or calendar icons to limit results to a selected publication date range. Use both calendars to search for an “in between” publication date. The early date should be specified first. Alternatively, you can search for publication dates using just one date to find titles published before the end date or after the start date.

• Subject: Select the Add/Edit subjects button to limit results to selected subjects. The Search Tree which appears will show the six top-level format categories. Click on the arrow icon beside the main subject to open up the search tree. To select an entire category, select the top-level subject. Multiple subjects can be selected by clicking on their checkboxes. To search for additional subjects, type in the text box at the top to bring up a drop-down menu with options.

• Format: Select the Add/Edit formats button to display a menu showing the different format categories. Three top-level bind categories will appear. To search for additional bindings, click on the arrow icon beside the main format to open the Search Tree. To select an entire category, select the top-level binding code. To select one or more individual binding types, click the checkbox beside the individual bindings.

• Publisher/Imprint/Distributor: To limit results to selected Publishers/Imprints/Distributors, begin by typing to display a drop-down list of available options. Select an option from the list, or enter a full name into the text box. Multiple Publishers/Imprints/Distributors can be selected.

Tutorial Videos

Watch our tutorial video to learn more about building a Gap Analysis Report: 

Results

Learn more about Gap Analysis Report Results here.