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Assortment planning

Assortment planning is the process of deciding which products a store carries, in which categories and in what quantity.

How it works

Planning sets the assortment breadth (which categories to carry), the depth inside each and how much of each product to stock. A common retail definition calls it a trade-off between breadth and depth.

For a store that sells through Google Ads, the ad account adds a second view: which products get shown and which of them sell. In our study of 1.4 million products, 7.9% of products made a sale over 13 months and took 78.1% of ad spend, while 55.0% got no budget at all. A plan built on stock levels alone misses that split: a product can be in stock and never shown. The share of products that get shown is assortment coverage.

So planning works as a cycle rather than a list made once a year: bring products in, let the ads show them, keep the ones that sell. Assortment planning for online stores sets out the full method.

Where you see it

In the portal, Assortment and seasonality walks the catalogue through the stages from the feed to sales. It also lines up product groups by product type, category or brand, with each group’s budget share and return against a benchmark.

Not to be confused with

  • Catalogue renewal — the steady flow of new products into the range. It is the part of planning that changes what is on the shelf over time.
  • SKU rationalization — cutting unprofitable items from the catalogue. It is one step of planning: the selection after ads have tested the products.

Right and wrong readings

  • Wrong: “More products in the catalogue bring more revenue.” Right: in GetProfit data (June 2025 – June 2026), catalogue size showed no link to revenue once the ad budget was held fixed. In 144 cases where a store’s active products grew by more than 20%, revenue rose 17.8% in the month of expansion. Over the next two months it moved +0.5% and −1.6%. Stores that expand tend to add ad budget at the same time.

Sources

  • Assortment Strategies (Retail) — Wikipedia: assortment planning as a trade-off between breadth and depth. Checked 2 October 2026.
  • GetProfit study: 1,404,808 products in 130+ stores over 13 months — catalogue layers by sales and spend.
  • GetProfit data, June 2025 – June 2026: catalogue size and revenue at a fixed budget; 144 catalogue expansions — revenue in the month of expansion and the two months after.