Retail Out-Of-Stocks: A Worldwide Examination of Extent, Causes and Consumer Responses

Thanks for your interest in our Out-of Stock research. Our goal is to disseminate the findings of the study widely, and thus we have worked an agreement with the publisher, Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA) to allow us to distribute the PDF of the full 66-page research report to interested parties at no cost.

To maintain some sense of continuity, please use the following citation when referencing the report within an article or as a caption, "2002 GMA Worldwide Retail Out-of-Stocks Study."

The full bibliographic reference for the publication is: Gruen, Thomas W., Daniel Corsten and Sundar Bharadwaj (2002). Retail Out of Stocks: A Worldwide Examination of Causes, Rates, and Consumer Responses. Washington, D.C.: Grocery Manufacturers of America.

This study was featured in the May, 2004 Harvard Business Review. To locate this article, use the following reference:

Corsten, Daniel and Thomas W. Gruen (2004), “Stock-Outs Cause Walkouts,” Harvard Business Review, May, 26-28

Again, thanks for your interest, and if you have further questions or comments about the study please feel free to contact me.

To access the study, please click here.

2008 Study

A Comprehensive Guide to Retail Out-of-Stock Reduction in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods Industry

Authors: Thomas W. Gruen, Ph.D. and Dr. Daniel Corsten. Published by Grocery Manufacturers of America, Food Marketing Institute, National Association of Chain Drug Stores, The Procter & Gamble Company, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. ISBN: 978-3-905613-04-9

The 2008 study by Tom Gruen and Daniel Corsten is now available. As a preview, you can view or download the presentation Tom Gruen made in Sao Paulo on October 2, 2007. To access the presentation including photos and graphics, please click here. To access the presentation in Portuguese, please click here.

To download the Executive Summary in PDF, please click here. To download the full report in PDF, please click here.

This study contains several tools that can be used to compute losses due to out-of-stocks as well as a calculator of the payout that can be expected when addressing out-of-stocks. To access the payout calculator, click here. This calculator provides the ability to play what-if scenarios in terms of how many products and stores they want to work on and which of the solutions they want to employ.  No matter what, the payout is exceptional.  

Check back regularly as we update this page with additional tools.