Crossmerchandising

Crossmerchandising is a merchandising strategy that positions complementary or related products in proximity—physically or in digital layouts—to encourage additional purchases and improve the shopping experience. It includes planograms, co-located items, thematic displays, and bundled offers across channels.

In physical retail, common techniques are endcaps, shelf adjacency, cross-sell signage, and bundled promotions. Retailers study shopper paths, product affinities, and seasonality to design displays that trigger relevance and impulse buys without causing clutter. In e-commerce, cross-merchandising appears as up-sell and cross-sell recommendations, frequently bought together prompts, and bundled product pages.

Implementation considerations include data-driven item pairing, margin impact, inventory coordination, supplier collaborations, and maintaining brand coherence. It often requires collaboration across merchandising, marketing, and operations, and should align with the store's planogram and pricing strategy.

Benefits include increased basket size, improved product discoverability, and better space utilization. Potential challenges include customer overload, misalignment with demand, or creating misleading promotions. Success is typically measured by lift in sales, average order value, cross-sell rate, and incremental revenue.

Examples by category illustrate its use: in grocery, placing bread near jam; in electronics, displaying cables near devices; in apparel, locating belts near pants. Crossmerchandising is employed across retail formats, including supermarkets, department stores, specialty shops, and online marketplaces.