Category Review Analyst
Structure a category review buyers actually act on.
What is the Category Review Analyst?
The Category Review Analyst is a free AI skill that structures a clear, buyer-ready category review for food and beverage teams. You give it the category, the retailer, your performance read, and the assortment in play; it organizes everything into the flow a category manager and buyer expect — category performance and what's driving it, segment and shopper dynamics, assortment and range logic, pricing and promotion observations, and a prioritized growth recommendation. It is built for category management and sales teams preparing for a line review or a retailer planning session who need to turn scattered data points into one coherent growth story. Rather than dumping numbers, it explains what they mean and what to do about them, in the order a buyer reads. Pair it with real performance, share, and demand data so the drivers and recommendations are grounded in evidence, not assertion.
Who it's for
- Category managers preparing line and category reviews
- Sales teams supporting a retailer planning session
- Insights teams shaping the category narrative
- Account teams building an assortment rationale
What you get
- A clear category performance summary and the drivers behind it
- Segment and shopper dynamics that matter
- An assortment / range rationale (add, keep, cut)
- Pricing and promotion observations
- A prioritized growth recommendation
- A tight executive summary to lead the deck
How to use it
- 1Paste the prompt into your AI model.
- 2Provide the category, retailer, performance read and assortment.
- 3Answer its clarifying questions to focus the analysis.
- 4Ask it to draft the executive summary slide or speaker notes.
See it in action
Example input
Category: refrigerated juices at a regional grocer. Performance: category flat, premium cold-pressed up double digits, value tier declining. Assortment: 22 SKUs, several slow movers in mid-tier. Brand: fictional 'Orchard & Co'. We want to justify adding two cold-pressed SKUs and cutting three slow movers.
Example output
Category review: Refrigerated juice — [Regional grocer] Executive summary: The category is flat in total, but value is masking a clear premium shift. Cold-pressed is growing double digits while mid-tier SKUs stagnate. The opportunity is to re-weight the set toward premium and trim non-productive mid-tier — net positive to category dollars and margin. Performance & drivers: - Total category: flat. - Premium / cold-pressed: growing strongly — recruiting a higher-spend shopper. - Value tier: declining; shoppers trading up or out. Segment & shopper dynamics: The growth shopper buys premium for health and freshness cues, shops more often, and has a higher basket. The current set over-serves a shrinking value shopper. Assortment rationale: - ADD: 2 cold-pressed SKUs to capture the trade-up. - KEEP: core sellers and the top value SKU for the price-led shopper. - CUT: 3 slow-moving mid-tier SKUs — low velocity, no unique role. Pricing & promo: Premium tier holds price well; deep discounting in mid-tier trains down without lifting units. Recommendation (prioritized): 1. Re-weight facings toward premium / cold-pressed. 2. Delist 3 underperforming mid-tier SKUs. 3. Add the 2 cold-pressed SKUs in the freed space. Want this as a 5-slide deck outline with speaker notes?
The prompt
Here's the start of the prompt. Download the free bundle for the full, ready-to-paste version — plus the installable Claude Skill and Custom-GPT instructions.
# Role You are a CPG category manager who builds reviews that buyers trust. You don't just report numbers — you explain the drivers and recommend an action. You think in performance, segments, shoppers, assortment, price, and promotion. # Context I'll provide - Category: [CATEGORY] - Retailer / channel: [RETAILER] - Performance read: [WHAT'S GROWING / DECLINING, ANY FIGURES] - Current assortment: [SKU COUNT, KEY ITEMS, KNOWN SLOW MOVERS] - The decision I'm trying to support: [ASSORTMENT / RANGE / PRICING CHANGE] # Your task 1. If category, retailer, performance, or assortment context is missing, ask up to 3 clarifying questions first.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a category review in CPG?
- A category review is a structured analysis a category manager presents to a retail buyer covering how the category is performing, what's driving it, how shoppers are behaving, and what assortment, pricing, and promotion changes will grow it. This skill organizes your inputs into that exact flow and ends with a prioritized recommendation.
- How does it help me justify adding or cutting SKUs?
- It builds an add / keep / cut rationale where every SKU gets a role-based reason — destination item, traffic driver, margin contributor, trade-up, or niche need. That role logic is what buyers respond to, far more than raw velocity, because it explains why each product earns its space on shelf.
- Will it make up numbers if I don't have full data?
- No. The prompt instructs the model to use only the figures you supply and to insert a clearly marked placeholder for anything missing, then explain what data would close the gap. You stay in control of every number you present to a buyer. Adding real performance data makes the drivers section much sharper.
- Can it produce a slide deck?
- Yes. After the review, ask it to convert the output into a slide outline with speaker notes — typically an executive summary, performance, shopper, assortment, and recommendation flow — so you can drop it straight into your deck for a line review.
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