Trade Spend Efficiency Analyzer

Example output

Trade spend efficiency analysis — Grovepoint Beverages, 2 quarters, $340,000 total spend

Efficiency ranked by spend type, cost per incremental case
- Secondary displays: $120,000 ÷ 48,000 incremental cases = $2.50 per incremental case. The most efficient spend type by a wide margin.
- Feature ads: $95,000 ÷ 22,000 incremental cases = $4.32 per incremental case. Moderately efficient, roughly 1.7x the cost per case of displays.
- Off-invoice discounts: $125,000 ÷ 14,000 incremental cases = $8.93 per incremental case, and this is likely the optimistic read. Off-invoice discounts have no built-in mechanism to confirm the 14,000 cases are genuinely incremental rather than cases that would have sold anyway at regular price, you flagged this uncertainty yourself, and it's the right instinct. Treat $8.93 as a floor, not a confirmed number; the true cost per incremental case may be meaningfully higher.

Biggest win
Secondary displays, at $2.50 per incremental case, returned roughly 3.6x more efficiently than off-invoice discounts on the numbers provided. This is the program to protect and likely expand first.

Biggest waste
Off-invoice discounts. At $125,000, this was the largest single spend category by dollars, but the least efficient and the least verifiable, combining the highest cost per case with the lowest confidence that the case counted actually needed the discount to happen. This is the first place to cut before touching displays or feature ads.

Account-by-account comparison
The figures above are blended across all 3 retail accounts. That's the biggest limitation of this analysis: the same $2.50-per-case display efficiency could be driven entirely by your strongest account while masking a weak performer elsewhere, or it could be consistent across all three. [Insert per-account spend and case data — breaking this out by account is the single highest-value next step, since reallocating spend requires knowing which account earns it, not just which spend type does in aggregate.]

What the data cannot yet explain
Whether the off-invoice discount's low efficiency is a structural problem with that spend type, or specific to how it was executed this period, for example whether any of the three retailers agreed to pass the discount through to shelf price versus simply pocketing it. Also unclear: whether feature ad timing lined up with genuine seasonal demand peaks or ran during flatter weeks, which would understate its true efficiency.

Reallocation recommendation for next period
1. Cut off-invoice discount spend by at least a third and reallocate it toward secondary displays, prioritizing the account(s) where display data is strongest once broken out.
2. Before renewing any off-invoice program, require retailer confirmation that the discount reaches shelf price, spend with no compliance visibility should not continue at $125,000 a year unexamined.
3. Track incremental cases by account starting next period, not just by spend type, so the next review can rank accounts as well as programs.

Leadership-ready summary
Over 2 quarters and $340,000 in trade spend, secondary displays delivered incremental cases at $2.50 each, by far the most efficient program, while off-invoice discounts, the single largest spend category at $125,000, delivered the weakest and least verifiable return at roughly $8.93 per incremental case. Recommend cutting off-invoice spend by at least a third next period, reallocating toward displays, and adding account-level tracking so future reviews can identify not just which program works, but which retail relationship earns the investment.

Want this rebuilt with account-level detail once you have that breakout, so the reallocation plan can name specific accounts?