Following up from the previous article on equivalized sales (EQ for short) we can look at EQ and calculate total share in a given category. As we are aware and mentioned in the previous article by just looking at dollar sales it may not be showing us the total trend. By adding in both unit and EQ sales this can help to help fill in the story. Customizing your databases can show these calculations of category share again keep in mind if you are doing the calculating that you are converting all products into the same unit of measure i.e., pounds or ounces. Here we will layout the data as shown in the Data Tip Sheet articles as I believe this has been the clearest of anything I have seen out there. Remember we are summing and averaging here so we can look at EQ sales at the item, brand and category level:
As we can see using this example above again looking at unit and EQ sales can give you a bigger picture on what is going on with your brand beyond sales dollars.
In the example above as we look at category share using these tools, we see that although both brands have the same unit sales giving them the same unit percentage share in category (1,800 in unit sales and 50% unit share) Brand Y has a much larger EQ share (61.9%) as a result from larger item sizes (16 and 20 oz). This can help us explore and come to some other conclusions when analyzing category.
