The shelf is a plan
A retail shelf is laid out to a plan. The plan specifies which products appear, how many facings each gets, at what height, and in what order along the bay. The document is generally called a planogram, and it is produced centrally and applied across stores of a given format.
The discipline that produces it is category management: treating a category as a unit to be optimised rather than as a collection of individual products. Inputs typically include rate of sale, margin, space productivity, pack dimensions, replenishment practicalities, the retailer's range strategy and its view of how shoppers navigate the category.
The key point for a shopper is that position carries information about the retailer's plan, not about the product. A product at eye level is there because the plan put it there.
What the law says about paying for position
The Groceries Supply Code of Practice governs dealings between designated large retailers and their suppliers, and it is overseen by the Groceries Code Adjudicator. It arose from a market investigation into the groceries sector.
The Code addresses a range of practices, including changes to supply agreements, delisting, payments demanded for various purposes, and the treatment of promotions. Among its provisions is a restriction on requiring payments from suppliers for better positioning of goods, other than in relation to promotions.
That restriction exists because the alternative arrangement, in which shelf position is straightforwardly sold, has predictable effects on which suppliers can reach shoppers, and those effects have little to do with the products.
The Adjudicator can investigate, publish findings and, in defined circumstances, impose financial penalties. It also runs an annual survey of suppliers, which is the most substantial public source on how the Code operates in practice.
| Decision | Decided by | Constraint |
|---|---|---|
| Whether a product is stocked | The retailer, centrally | Code provisions on delisting and notice |
| How much space a product gets | The retailer, through space planning | Code restriction on payments for positioning |
| Height and position within the bay | The retailer, through the planogram | As above |
| Promotional locations in store | The retailer | Location restrictions for products in defined categories |
| The selling price | The retailer | Price marking rules and consumer protection law |
| The unit price shown | Required | Price marking rules |
Structure set out by this newsroom from the published rules named in the sources below. It is not a survey, a measurement or a market study.
Height, position and the things that follow from them
The physical properties of a shelf produce consistent effects, and they are well understood by everyone who lays out a shelf.
Height matters because the vertical range a shopper scans without effort is narrower than the height of the fixture. Positions at the extremes of the bay require deliberate attention. Number of facings matters because a wider block is more visible and also holds more stock, which reduces the risk of a gap.
Adjacency matters because a product is read against the ones beside it. A product placed next to a higher priced comparator is being presented differently from the same product placed next to a lower priced one, without anything about it changing.
None of this is hidden knowledge and none of it is unlawful. It is retail practice, and it is the environment in which the unit price habit does its work.
Ranging, which precedes position
Before position comes the more consequential decision: whether a product is stocked at all. Range decisions determine what a shopper can consider, and they are taken centrally, periodically, using criteria the shopper never sees.
Delisting is the counterpart, and it is addressed by the Code, which requires reasonable notice and, in defined circumstances, genuine commercial reasons and a duty to keep records. The reason for that attention is straightforward: for a supplier, delisting is an existential event, and the asymmetry of bargaining power in that conversation is the thing the Code exists to manage.
From the shopper's side, ranging is invisible by definition. You cannot notice the absence of something you did not know existed, which is why range decisions are the least scrutinised part of the whole system.
Placement rules that are not commercial
Some placement is now determined by regulation rather than by the retailer. Restrictions on the location of promotions for certain products, introduced in England, limit where products in defined categories may be placed, including at store entrances, aisle ends and checkouts, for businesses within scope.
This is worth knowing because it means a shelf layout is now the output of two different logics: commercial optimisation and regulatory constraint. Where a familiar product is no longer at an aisle end, the explanation may be a rule rather than a negotiation.
This publication takes no position on the policy. The relevant point here is structural: placement is no longer purely a commercial variable.
What a shopper can actually do with this
Three things follow practically.
Look at the whole bay, including the extremes. The top and bottom shelves are the parts of the fixture designed to be scanned less, and they contain products that are in the range for a reason.
Compare on the unit price, not on prominence. Prominence is an allocation. The unit price is a fact.
Treat adjacency as framing. What sits next to a product is part of how it is presented, and it was chosen.
Where this stops
This article describes a process. It names no retailer, makes no claim about any company's practices, and quotes no figures, because this publication does not do those things. Where the subject becomes a question about a specific business's conduct, the Groceries Code Adjudicator and the CMA are the bodies with the evidence and the powers.
Elsewhere on Feedworthy. Use by and best before: one is a safety instruction, the other is not. What natural means on a food label in the UK.