By Wednesday afternoon, the store manager in Penrith is staring at a pallet of stock with nowhere to put it, two staff members short, and a POS system that won't process the discount without manual intervention.
Welcome to the gap nobody owns.
Australian retail head offices design complex promotional mechanics—multi-buy offers, bundled SKUs, loyalty multipliers. But the spreadsheet doesn't capture reality: the Dubbo store lacks shelf space, the Hobart team is understaffed, and the POS system can't handle the mechanic without workarounds.
A metro flagship with 2,000 square metres can dedicate an end-cap and aisle takeover. A regional store with 400 square metres is already fighting for space between everyday range, existing promotions, and seasonal stock.
The plan says create a feature display. The store asks: which products do we remove, and where do they go?
Nobody answers. Half the promoted SKUs make it to the floor. The rest stay in the back. Sales miss target. Head office wonders why.
Promotional execution guides specify detailed setup, price changes, signage installation, and ongoing maintenance. The challenge? Industry data shows 40% of retail businesses report turnover above 20%[1], with persistent labour shortages creating execution constraints.
Store managers face difficult choices: execute the promotion with existing staff, or pull team members away from serving customers and managing operations. Either way, something gives.
The most elegant promotion dies at checkout if the POS can't handle it. When head office designs mechanics requiring specific scanning sequences, manual codes, real-time inventory checks, or dynamic pricing, they're assuming technical capabilities that may not exist reliably.
The workaround culture kicks in. Staff process discounts manually, make judgment calls, approximate. Customers get inconsistent experiences. Data integrity evaporates. Nobody knows if the promotion worked because the numbers are contaminated.
Nobody owns the gap between design and execution.
Marketing designs for strategic objectives. Merchandising selects products and builds the financial model. Operations executes but wasn't consulted. Store managers are measured on overall performance, not whether they achieved unrealistic promotional mechanics.
Everyone does their job. The promotion fails anyway. The post-mortem blames "poor execution" without examining whether execution was ever realistic.
Several factors are making this gap more acute:
Promotional complexity: Retailers struggle with promotional coordination and execution. Research shows that 96% of commercial directors agree that running promotions that consistently perform well is a significant challenge[4], while retailers note that in-store coordination remains difficult.
Margin pressure: Deloitte reported 2023 as "the worst year for retail sales growth in a generation"[2], with heavy discounting impacting margins. Failed promotions hurt more when every point matters.
Omnichannel expectations: KPMG's 2024 research into seamless commerce in the Asia-Pacific region found that 42% of Australian shoppers are omnichannel[3]. Promotions must work consistently across in-store, online, and click-and-collect. Execution gaps now create failures across multiple touchpoints.
Talent churn: Research shows that in retail and hospitality, 40% of businesses report employee turnover above 20%[1]. With high retail turnover, institutional knowledge needed to execute complex promotions often doesn't exist.
The execution gap carries real costs: lost revenue from underperforming promotions, wasted supplier investment, staff frustration, customer confusion, degraded data quality, and opportunity cost.
Research confirms that retailers struggle with promotion evaluation and measurement, making it difficult to quantify the true impact of execution failures. These costs are real but invisible, distributed across marketing budgets and operational variances.
Fixing this requires acknowledging the gap exists and making someone responsible for it.
Design for reality: Include store operations in promotional planning from day one. Test mechanics in real stores before rollout.
Resource for ambition: If the strategy demands complex execution, fund it. Budget for additional labour hours, POS development, and training.
Simplify ruthlessly: Accept that complexity creates execution risk. Design mechanics stores can actually deliver.
The current approach—designing promotions in isolation and hoping stores figure it out—isn't working. Australian retail is competitive enough without internal processes making it harder.
It's time to close the gap between what head office designs and what stores can physically execute.
What's your experience with promotional execution gaps? Are head office and stores speaking the same language in your organisation?