Assortment Gap

Assortment is the range a store offers: which categories, how many products in each, which sizes, colours and price points. An assortment gap is a place where a competitor's range covers shopper demand and yours does not.

Gaps come in a few shapes:

Category gaps. A competitor sells a whole category you do not, for example travel sizes, gift sets or a men's line.

Depth gaps. You both sell the category, but the competitor offers far more choice in it: more styles, more colours, more sizes.

Price-band gaps. You both sell the category, but only the competitor has products at an entry price or a premium price.

Variant gaps. The same product type, but the competitor offers the size, shade or material that shoppers search for and you do not.

Not every gap should be filled. A gap in a category that does not fit your brand is a choice, not a problem. The point of the analysis is to make the choice on purpose, with the competitor's range in front of you.

Shoppers compare ranges as well as prices. If the size, shade or price point they want is missing, the sale goes to the store that has it, and your price never comes into it.

Gaps also move. Competitors launch and drop products all the time, so a one-off audit goes out of date. A competitor that adds a new category, or deepens one, is telling you where it expects demand. A competitor that quietly removes a category may be leaving room for you.

For merchandisers and buyers the analysis feeds the buying plan: which categories to add, which to deepen, and where your range already leads and should be defended rather than expanded.

This example is hypothetical. A skincare brand sells 40 products. Its three closest competitors each sell between 60 and 90. Grouping all four catalogs by category shows:

A category gap. Two of the three competitors sell travel-size sets; the brand sells none.

A price-band gap. In serums, the competitors each have at least one product under the brand's cheapest serum, so the brand has no entry-price serum.

A lead. In SPF, the brand has more products than any competitor, so that is a category to defend, not to expand.

The buying team now has three concrete questions for next season instead of a general feeling that "the competitors have more choice".

1. Group catalogs the same way. Map your categories and each competitor's categories onto one shared list, otherwise every comparison is apples to oranges.

2. Compare count, depth and price spread. For each category, count products and look at the price range covered, not only the average price.

3. Track additions and removals over time. New categories and dropped products are the early signals. RivalSweeper checks each monitored competitor site daily and records catalog changes: new, removed and updated products, and new categories, for up to 10,000 products per competitor on Basic and 20,000 on Pro.

4. Read the gap report against your own catalog. RivalSweeper's gap analysis shows the categories your competitors carry and you don't, the ones you lead, and how their products spread across price ranges. It is built from those daily catalog checks and refreshes weekly.

5. Decide per gap. Fill, deepen, defend or ignore, and write the decision down so you can check it next season.