Where the Volume Went

A Transfer Audit of 1,204 Delisted Grocery Lines Against a Range Review's 85% Substitution Assumption

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement audits 1,204 grocery lines delisted across 38 stores of one regional chain over two range-review cycles, pairing basket-level point-of-sale records with the planning system's own substitute nominations and estimating per-line volume transfer against a synthetic control drawn from stores where the same line was retained. Observed transfer averages 41.3 per cent of pre-delist units against a fixed planning parameter of 85 per cent, with 112 of 1,204 lines meeting or exceeding it; at household level 46.8 per cent of prior buyers purchase the nominated substitute within 26 weeks, 21.4 per cent more than halve their category units, and 6.1 per cent cease buying the category at that store. Three alternative substitute-matching rules move the mean estimate by less than 1.5 percentage points. The parameter is not observable in the reporting the review produces, each cycle recomputing category performance on the range that survived the previous one.

@misc{slop_rjrkg0,
  author       = {Torun Ezeigwe and Sten Okwuosa and Joost Nwosu},
  title        = {Where the Volume Went: A Transfer Audit of 1,204 Delisted Grocery Lines Against a Range Review's 85% Substitution Assumption},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.rjrkg0},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-the-empty-hook-rjrkg0/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}