Knowing your brand is present in 80% of stores is useful. Knowing which brands it shares that space with is what changes the conversation.
Brand co-occurrence is the measurement of which other brands were found in the same visits as yours. If an audit covers four brands in the same store or on the same page, it is recorded that they appeared together. Across dozens of visits, those pairs reveal which competitors the brand actually contests space with, and in what contexts.
A high presence rate can hide a weak competitive position. Being in 80% of stores next to two market leaders is one situation; being in the same 80% alone in the category is an entirely different one. Presence measures coverage, co-occurrence measures context, and context is what explains share.
A visit covering four brands produces six co-occurrence pairs. One visit per brand produces none.
A pair observed once is noise. From a few dozen visits onwards the patterns start to settle.
Select the brand you care about as the context for the analysis.
It shows the other brands found in the same visits, in absolute number and percentage.
Filter by banner, region or period to see where the pattern shifts.
Understanding which brands you actually compete with at the point of sale, which are not always the assumed ones.
Bringing data about the competitive context instead of generic category arguments.
Anticipating in which stores a promotion will face the most direct shelf competition.
Comparing competitive composition across banners, and between physical and online.
The team assumes it competes with two national brands. Co-occurrence data shows that in 60% of visits the brand sitting alongside is the retailer's own label. That is a different commercial conversation from the one being prepared.
At one banner the brand co-occurs mostly with premium brands, at another with entry-level ones. The same brand is playing two different games, which justifies different promotional material and arguments.
On the physical shelf the brand co-occurs with three competitors; in the same retailer's online store, the category page shows twelve. Competitive pressure in the digital channel is far higher, and strategy usually does not reflect that.
| With presence rate only | With co-occurrence |
|---|---|
| You know where the brand is | You know who the brand is with |
| Competition assumed by intuition | Competition observed and counted |
| The same argument for every banner | Arguments tuned to the real context |
| Online channel treated like physical | The difference in competitive pressure is visible |
| No basis for negotiating space | Concrete data on who occupies the space |
| Where to find it | Analysis Centre, co-occurrence chart |
|---|---|
| Unit of analysis | The visit: two brands co-occur if they were analysed in the same visit |
| Presentation | Absolute number and percentage against the visits in scope |
| Filters | Brand, user, period, checklist answers |
| Channels | On-site and digital visits, together or separately |
| Export | Included in the Analysis Centre PDF report |
Against the visits that already match the selected criteria, not against the workspace total. A figure of 40% for brand B means that in 40% of the visits where your brand was analysed, B was too.
There is no magic number, but below a few dozen visits per brand the pairs swing a lot. The sign that you have enough is when the ordering of brands stops changing week to week.
No. Share of shelf measures space held; co-occurrence measures joint presence. They complement each other: the first says how much, the second says next to whom.
Yes, that is the condition for having any data. If the checklist only covers your own brands there are no pairs to record. It is enough to include the main competitors as catalogue brands.
It does, and it is usually more revealing there, because a category page shows dozens of brands at once, which rarely happens on a physical shelf.
It is, as long as the checklist and the brand set stay stable. Adding brands to the catalogue midway changes the comparison base, and it is worth recording when that happened.
The brand's shop window is no longer only in the store. It is on the category page of an online supermarket, and almost nobody audits it with the same rigour.
A visit to an online store is a visit. It has a location, a date, criteria and evidence, just like an on-site one.
Does the product appear in the category? With which image? Is the description complete? Simple questions almost nobody answers regularly.
We walk through the co-occurrence analysis with sample data from your category.