31 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • JULY/AUGUST 2024 offering and make available more of the products players find appealing. The analysis compares the percentage of sales that come from each price point to the percentage of bins allocated to that price point. If the percentage of bins is much higher or much lower than the percentage of sales, the ratio is out of alignment. “Beyond missing opportunities, being out of alignment creates extra work and potential problems at retail,” explains Andrew Hill, IGT Director Marketing and Same Store Sales for North America. “If you have multiple bins full of $X games that are selling very slowly, it means players have lost excitement for them. And if very few bins are dedicated to a price point that’s selling rapidly, retailers constantly need to go in and refill them, which creates many more opportunities for out of stocks to occur — and even opportunities for theft. When bins are more correctly allocated to each price point, it also makes things easier on a lottery’s inside sales team, on their sales force, and on their retailers. And all of that makes the experience better for players.” IGT’s Sales Development team reviews space-to-sales analysis with lottery customers to confirm what product mix will help players find games they want and produce returns to a state’s beneficiaries. “When we do rate of sales analysis,” Hill continues, “we look at it from the lottery’s perspective with a focus on lottery profitability.” In addition to the standard rate of sales analysis, the team also analyzes bin profitability — the weekly profit per bin produced for the lottery to return to the state for good causes — informing adjustments to the price-point mix. If there is a price point that players rarely choose, fewer bins are needed for that price point. “It’s common sense to offer more of what players want to buy, and any business would be making a similar move when confronted with that data,” he observes. Not all lotteries use planograms, and among those that do, not all strictly enforce them. When a lottery sees the space-to-sales data, sometimes the mix of games faced at retail turns out not to be what they intended to display. “We can look at the penetration data with a lottery and determine the implied planogram,” Hill continues. “If a lottery has an average bin count of 36 games, for instance, then the top 36-most-penetrated games is essentially their planogram — what is actually faced in the majority of the lottery’s retailers. It can be eye-opening to see that, and if that doesn't align with what a lottery had expected it to be, that's definitely a starting point for optimization. Whether or not a lottery uses planograms or even the word planogram, what’s the mix of games they want a consumer to see when they walk into a retailer? We can help lotteries determine that mix and other opportunities with meaningful upside. If they’re adding LVMs, we can help them make strategic decisions on what to face in those bins.” While lotteries can do this strategic analysis on their own, many like to review it with IGT analysts. “We can share a national or international perspective to help identify relevant leading practices or pinpoint what has worked well in other jurisdictions and bring those successes forward,” Hill notes. There’s a Tool for That IGT’s Sales Wizard provides Lottery sales teams, including sales reps in the field, with Space to Sales analysis for each retailer. It calculates the percentage of sales coming from each instant ticket price point, compares that to the number of facings a lottery offers at each price point, and recommends increasing or decreasing the number of facings for that price point based on the sales by facing. While not vending-specific, lotteries can use it for vending.
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