Anatomy of a retail plan - essential terminology
This video guide explains common terminology used across retail store planning, store layout optimisation and wider retail planning workflows.
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Do you know the terminology used in a floor plan? This video explains all the terms—watch it now!
Gross Internal Area, Sales Area and Back of House
The Gross Internal Area (GIA) measures the entire store’s footprint. This area splits into the Sales Area, where customers shop, and the Back of House, which includes the warehouse and staff facilities like the canteen, toilets, and changing rooms.
Sales Area – Macro Space Definitions
Within the Sales Area, the Macro Space organises departments. In a convenience store, it features sections like Ambient Food, BWS (Beers, Wines & Spirits), chilled produce, frozen foods, fresh foods, and electrical departments. Convenience retail planning often prioritises shopper missions, high-frequency categories, fast customer flow and efficient use of limited retail space.
Categories within a Department
Each department consists of multiple categories. For example, the Ambient Foods department includes categories such as baking, biscuits, bread, and cakes.
Bays, Aisles and Gondola Ends
Stores arrange individual bays or gondolas in rows, with aisles forming the spaces between them. The ends of these rows, called Gondola Ends, serve as prime promotional spaces due to their high footfall and visibility.
Secondary Retail Space
Secondary retail space refers to promotional areas positioned away from the main category location. This includes gondola ends, queueing areas, seasonal displays and promotional feature spaces designed to increase visibility, impulse purchases and customer engagement.
Category Adjacencies
The category adjacencies are the categories that are located directly next to each other – in the video it shows frozen vegetables and frozen meals are the category adjacencies to frozen meats. Category adjacencies are important within macro space planning because they influence shopper flow, linked purchasing behaviour and overall store performance. Retailers are also increasingly testing new concept formats and experiential retail environments to improve customer engagement and support evolving shopper missions.
Shopper Flow
Shopper flow describes how customers move through a retail environment. Retail space planners analyse shopper flow to position departments, promotional areas and high-demand categories in locations that improve visibility, navigation and overall sales performance. Retailers are increasingly adapting store layouts to accommodate additional customer services such as parcel lockers and click-and-collect facilities.
Fixtures and Fittings
Fixtures and fittings include shelving, chillers, freezers and specialist display equipment used to support category layouts, shopper flow and wider retail space planning strategies.
Run Lengths
Run length is a key retail planning measurement used to describe the continuous length of shelving between aisles or fixtures.
Sales per Linear Metre
Sales per linear metre is a key retail planning metric used to assess category performance, profitability and the effectiveness of retail space allocation.
Heat-Mapped Floor Plans
Heat-mapped floor plans use colour-coded data to help retailers visualise category performance, customer movement and low-footfall areas within a store. This supports more informed macro space planning and store layout decisions.
Micro-Space and Planograms
Micro-space planning focuses on individual shelf layouts and planograms, while macro space planning determines the wider store layout, category positioning and customer journey across the retail environment. Successful retail store planning and design requires macro and micro space planning to work together effectively.
Planograms help retailers manage facings, product positioning and shelf-level merchandising standards across multiple stores and retail formats.
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Tell me more!Evolving retail planning requirements
Retail planning terminology and store layouts continue to evolve alongside changing shopper behaviour, sustainability initiatives and operational requirements.
Regulations and initiatives such as HFSS restrictions, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and emerging Deposit Return Schemes (DRS) may increasingly influence promotional space, packaging formats, category positioning and wider macro space planning decisions across retail estates.
Modern retail stores planning increasingly relies on accurate floor plans, shopper-flow analysis, sales data and macro space planning decisions to optimise store performance across retail estates.
We hope this video provides a useful retail plan essential terminology guide, but if there are any additional terms you think should be included, please let us know.
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