In short In-store execution, or retail execution, means the product, price, display and offer a brand planned are what the shopper finds in each outlet. That holds for a supermarket branch in Nairobi, a duka in Nakuru and a provision store in Lagos alike. It runs as a loop of four steps. A rep or merchandiser visits and checks the outlet against the plan. They fix or flag the gap, and head office acts on the flag. Most teams in Kenya and Nigeria manage the first two steps. The last two are where the money leaks.
Picture a sales lead in Nairobi with a new 200g pack and a launch offer. The cartons left the depot two weeks ago. How many dukas, kiosks and supermarket branches show the pack at the launch price today? The honest answer is a guess, and in-store execution replaces that guess with a fact.
A weak shelf never shows up as its own line. A duka owner who cannot get your promo pack buys a cheaper local brand and often keeps it. A launch gets written off as weak when the pack never left the stockist. So after every visit, ask one question: did the gap get closed?
Plan, budget and shelf: who owns which part
Trade marketing designs the promotion and pays for it. The retail execution strategy picks the outlets, the products and the shelf you want. Execution is whether that shelf shows up in each outlet. Visual merchandising sits inside it: how the product looks once it is there.
Take a biscuit maker that plans a month-end bundle for its best outlets, with a stand and a price card in each. Choosing those outlets and that bundle is strategy. Execution is how many of them had the stand up, the bundle in stock and the right price showing in week one, and how quickly the rest were put right.
Supermarket branch or duka: two different jobs
Most brands in Kenya and Nigeria sell through both modern trade and general trade, and the rep's work in each looks nothing alike. Give each its own checklist.
| On the visit | Supermarket branches | Dukas, kiosks and provision stores |
|---|---|---|
| Who sets the range | A buyer at head office, through the agreed layout | The owner, each time they restock |
| The rep's main task | Check the shelf against the agreement and escalate | Tidy the shelf, take the order and push the offer |
| Who closes a gap | Branch manager, buyer or key accounts | The rep, the stockist or the wholesaler |
In a supermarket branch, your lever is evidence: dated photos of the space you paid for and did not get. In a duka, it is the owner's trust. Fix the shelf and take the order in one visit, then pay for display space so the layout holds.
Six checks at every outlet, and the number behind each
| Check | The rep asks | Head office follows |
|---|---|---|
| Stock on the shelf | Is each must-stock pack on the shelf, not in the store room? If not, does the distributor hold it? | On-shelf availability: the share of must-stock packs a shopper can see |
| Layout and facings | Does the shelf match the agreed layout, with the facings we agreed? | Planogram compliance and share of shelf, scored from a shelf photo by a person or by image recognition |
| Price and offer | Is the promo price up and the stand built? Has last month's POSM come down? | Price and promotion compliance against the promotion list |
| The visit itself | Did I reach this outlet on the planned day, with a dated, geo-tagged photo? | Visit compliance: planned calls made on the day |
| Owner and staff | Can the shopkeeper explain the new pack and the scheme? | Briefings logged per outlet |
| Last visit's flags | Was what I flagged last time fixed? | Action-close rate: the share of flags fixed before the next call |
If you add one new number, make it the last one. Strong visit compliance with flat availability means reps call and nothing changes, and a falling action-close rate warns you before availability drops. Read each number by outlet type and area: a national average hides the Mombasa kiosks or Onitsha stalls where your volume sits.
To roll these checks into one perfect store score for each outlet type, see our perfect store and in-store execution guide.
Where in-store execution fails in Kenya and Nigeria
Four failures come back in every territory, and three start after the rep has walked out.
- The pack never reached the street. The rep writes "out of stock" and moves on, but the cause sits further back. The sub-distributor's van skipped the route, the stockist was on credit hold, or the open-market wholesaler never got the promo pack. Fix: let the rep see what the distributor holds during the visit, so the flag goes to whoever can move stock.
- Reps drift to the easy calls. Paid on visit counts, reps choose the outlets near the tarmac. The kiosk behind the market and the branch with a hard buyer go unseen. Fix: set how often each outlet is seen by its value and its live offers; visit planning software can build routes from those rules.
- The fix belongs to someone else. A broken cooler is a job for the trade assets team, a stockist on credit hold for the distributor manager, a supermarket listing for key accounts. "Out of stock" sits in a shared report; "distributor to deliver by Friday, area manager to confirm" gets done. Fix: put a named owner and a date on every flag.
- Head office learns too late. Photos pile up in WhatsApp groups and get copied into a sheet at month end, after the promotion has closed. Fix: have reps send the audit and photos from the outlet, so the status of each offer is visible while it still runs.
A Lagos example: one flavour, one wholesaler
A drinks brand launches a new flavour with a price-off offer in the provision stores and kiosks of a busy Lagos road. These shops rarely wait for a distributor's van; owners restock from a wholesaler, often on a Monday morning.
- The rep walks into a provision store on the launch list. The price card is already stuck up, but the new flavour is not on the shelf.
- The owner says her wholesaler does not carry it. On the phone, the rep sees the launch stock still at the distributor, never sold on to this street's wholesalers.
- The rep books a small order on the spot and sends a flag to the area manager that names the store, the wholesaler and the distributor.
- The area manager calls the distributor that day, and the distributor loads the flavour for those wholesalers on the next run.
- A week later the rep photographs the shelf with the flavour and the right price card, and the flag is closed.
Without the loop, a photo of an empty shelf lands in a WhatsApp group and nobody replies. The cause was one wholesaler link, and one flag with one named owner fixed it.
Retail execution software: when WhatsApp and a spreadsheet stop working
The software puts a task list for each outlet on the rep's phone, records the audit and photos, and sends each gap to whoever should close it.
WhatsApp photos and a spreadsheet are enough while one manager can see every photo and phone about every gap. Past that, or once head office needs an offer's status while it runs, you need software.
BeatRoute's retail audit software and sales force automation handle the visit, the audit, the order and the follow-up in one app. Its distributor management system lets the rep see distributor stock from the outlet. The VM Audit AI Agent scores shelf photos, and the Scheduling AI Agent chooses which outlets each rep should see: with it, productive visits rose from 45% to 78%. BeatRoute suits brands whose reps, merchandisers or promoters check stores the brand does not own; a retailer auditing its own stores for safety and operations needs a store operations tool instead.
In Nigeria, AAVA Brands tracked must-sell products against retail execution KPIs on the BeatRoute platform and grew store-level sellouts by 25-30% (AAVA Brands case study).
Before you buy, pilot in one territory with supermarket branches and dukas, and compare the action-close rate before and after. Ask any vendor: can a rep see distributor stock during the visit, who receives a flag, and does the app keep photos and orders when the signal drops in an open market? For features in more depth, read our guide to retail execution software, or book a demo to watch the loop run on your own outlet list.
Frequently asked questions
What does a merchandiser or retail execution rep do?
A merchandiser walks a planned route of outlets and checks each against the plan. Some only audit and fix the shelf. Others also book orders, so a missing pack is ordered on the spot.
How does AI change in-store execution?
AI takes on the slow work, such as scoring shelf photos and picking which outlets need a call next. It does not close a gap on its own: a flagged problem still needs a person who owns the fix.
