The Relationship Between Retail Assortment Size and Sales. What Do We Know so Far?

The size of the assortment is an important competitive tool for retailers that seems to affect their sales. This work aims to investigate the relationship between assortment size and sales in the existing retail literature to summarize and synthesize the effects to offer prospective research lines. The systematic review of the literature is more suitable for confined research areas or niche topics, as is the case of retail assortment size-sales/elasticity relationship. Although there are many articles that analyze the relationship between the assortment size and sales (per brand, per category, and per store), to the best of our knowledge, there is little research that explicitly estimates assortment size elasticity. In summary, the literature review shows conflicting results on the relationship between assortment size and retail sales, although the intensity seems to depend on product category frequency and penetration of purchase, as well as brand type. Furthermore, the findings of most studies show positive assortment size elasticity in store choice and category sales. Given these mixed results, to date, the direction of causality is one of the primary problems that researchers must face regarding the retail assortment size – sales relationship.