Christmas is the most critical sales period for retailers. Footfall surges, buying behavior changes overnight, and shelves are expected to perform flawlessly despite limited space and unpredictable demand. Traditional shelf planning methods often struggle to keep up with this seasonal complexity. This is where AI-driven planograms play a transformative role. By combining data intelligence, automation, and predictive analytics, AI helps retailers prepare Christmas demand peaks with speed, accuracy, and confidence.

Why is Christmas Demand Hard to Manage?

During the festive season, retailers face unique challenges:

• Sudden spikes in demand for select categories.
• Faster stock turnover and higher risk of out-of-stocks.
• Increased impulse buying and gifting behavior.
• Limited time to rework store layouts.
• Inconsistent shelf execution across multiple stores.

Manual shelf planning or static planograms are often too slow to respond to these rapid changes.

How AI-Driven Shelf Planning Makes the Difference?

• Predicting Christmas demand accurately: AI analyzes historical holiday sales, recent trends, regional preferences, and even promotional calendars to forecast demand at a granular level. For example, a grocery retailer uses AI to identify that chocolates, baking ingredients, and premium beverages sell 2–3x more in the last two weeks of December. AI automatically allocates more facings to these categories while reducing shelf space for slow movers.
• Automating festive shelf resets: AI-powered planogram tools can generate Christmas-ready shelves in minutes, eliminating weeks of manual work. These tools automatically adjust product placement based on seasonal demand, shelf dimensions, and merchandising rules. Retailers can roll out festive layouts across multiple stores simultaneously while maintaining consistency and accuracy. As a result, teams respond faster to demand changes and focus more on execution rather than manual planning. For example, multi-store retailers can use AI Autofill to instantly populate shelves with top-selling Christmas SKUs based on sales velocity, product size, and merchandising rules. Each store receives a planogram tailored to its shelf dimensions and customer profile.
• Optimizing shelf space for high-impact categories:During Christmas, not all products deserve equal space. AI helps prioritize high-margin and high-demand SKUs, ensuring shelves work harder. AI continuously analyzes sales velocity, profitability, and shopper preferences to adjust space allocation in real time. Seasonal bestsellers and gifting items receive increased visibility, while slow-moving products are scaled back or repositioned. For example, retailers can place gift wraps, greeting cards, and ribbons next to chocolates and toys, increasing impulse purchases without expanding shelf space.
• Reducing out-of-stock during peak days: Out-of-stocks during Christmas does not just mean lost sales—they mean lost customers. AI continuously monitors shelf performance and flags potential stock risks. Retailers can use AI-driven shelf analytics to detect fast-depleting SKUs like candies and beverages to boost sales.
• Adapting shelves for regional Christmas preferences: Christmas shopping behavior varies depending on region, store size, and customer demographics. AI enables localized shelf planning at a scale. Urban stores receive premium gifting assortments, while suburban stores prioritize family packs and bulk deals—automatically generated by AI without manual intervention.
• Ensuring consistent shelf execution across stores: AI-driven planogram compliance tools compare planned shelves with actual store execution using images and visual analysis. This helps retailers ensure festive displays, end caps, and promotional shelves are implemented correctly across hundreds of stores, preserving brand consistency during the busiest season.

Overview of Nexgen POG

Nexgen POG is a robust and user-friendly cloud-based visual merchandising tool. It is designed for quick and efficient planogramming with minimal effort. Planograms in retail can be designed by easily dragging and dropping the products. The multi-device compatibility feature of POG allows you to obtain, share and edit on any device, including your phone. It helps in designing store-specific planograms for increased product visibility and sales.

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