Poor Visual Merchandising Costs US Retail $10B per Month

One Door and GlobalData Calculate the Cost of Poor Visual Merchandising in New 2025 Report

Poor Visual Merchandising Costs US Retail $10B per Month

● US retailers lost $125 billion in sales over the past 12 months due to poor visual merchandising.

● Over the past 12 months, almost half of consumers left a store and abandoned their purchases due to poor visual merchandising.

● An unbelievable 73.4% of consumers say they are not completely satisfied with in-store visual merchandising.

We’ve all been there: shopping, and the physical state of the store is a mess. Between the option to shop at numerous competitive retailers or simply complete a purchase online, when does a consumer simply give up? And how does that experience impact the customer’s future behavior? Wanting to discover precisely that, GlobalData, an analysis and insights firm, and One Door, a leading provider of visual merchandising software, conducted first-of-its-kind research that measures consumer satisfaction with visual merchandising and its impact on retail sales.

The results were astounding: the monetary cost of store abandonment due to poor visual merchandising equates to US retailers losing $124.5 billion in sales. This deficiency represents 3.3% of annual brick-and-mortar retail sales in the US.

According to the report, 73.4% of surveyed consumers are not completely satisfied with visual merchandising in retail stores they visited within the past year.

Additionally, almost 50% of shoppers walked out of at least one store over the past 12 months due to poor merchandising. The frustration was caused by a dozen merchandising factors, such as hard-to-find products, poor display practices, and damaged fixtures.

“For years, retailers have implicitly understood the linkage between great visual merchandising and sales results, but no one has ever really measured the impact,” said One Door CEO Tom Erskine. “As retailers look to prioritize their investments, this data will shed light on the potential downside of cutting corners related to the in-store experience.”

Neil Saunders Managing Director Retail, at GlobalData adds: “It’s well known that good merchandising can drive sales, but the reverse is also true – poor visual merchandising is highly damaging to the revenue line. Consumers these days are time poor and have a low tolerance for friction in stores. Retailers that make life difficult with messy displays, hard to find products, or excess clutter are driving their consumers to shop elsewhere. And in today’s competitive market, there are plenty of alternatives – including online shopping.”

The full study is available at www.onedoor.com/resource/poor-merchandising-report/.

ENDS