Ask

Ask answers questions such as "Which stores have been out of our couscous the longest?" or "Where does WA pay more than the east coast for our range?". It works out the numbers from your products, your rivals and the store brands you compare against, and shows them as a chart, a table or one big number, with a sentence that answers the question.

Open Ask#

There are three ways in:

• From search. Click the search bar, or press ⌘/Ctrl then K or /, and type your question. Choose the Ask row, and the answer appears right there in the panel. Click Open in Ask to carry on in the Ask page.
• The menu. Click Ask in the menu on the left, or press G then A.
• The Ask page. Go to Ask. It opens with four example questions about your own products, rivals and main chain.

See Search and quick answers for what search answers by itself, without Ask.

Ask a question#

1. Type your question in the box at the bottom of the page, or click an example to put it in the box.
2. Press Enter, or click the arrow button. Shift and Enter starts a new line.
3. The answer appears under your question. Ask the next one in the same box.

Each question is answered on its own: Ask doesn't remember the question before it. Name the product, chain, state or period every time ("at Coles in WA over the last month"). If you don't name a period, a chart over time or a list of changes covers the last 30 days. Every other answer is as of the latest day. A question can be up to 500 characters.

What it answers well#

Ask knows, for every product on your list, at every store of the chains your plan includes, each day: the shelf price, promotions and how deep they are, stock, ranging, and every change (price up or down, a promo started, ended or changed, ranged, dropped, out of stock, back in stock). Good questions are about those:

• Price. "Our shelf price at each chain", "Rival prices in QLD", "How has our price moved over the last month?". A price is the median shelf price across stores. A price over time, or one number covering several products or chains, is the average of each product's price at each chain.
• Promotions. "Rival promotions this week", "When did our main rival last go half price?", "Promo depth by brand".
• Stock. "Which stores have been out of stock the longest?", "How many stores are we out of stock at?", "In stock by chain".
• Ranging. "How many stores range our products?", "How many stores range our products, chain by chain?", "Line graph of our distribution at Coles over the last month".
• Changes. "What changed since Monday?", "Which of our products were dropped this month?".

You can narrow any of them by product, brand, chain, or your products, your rivals or the store brands, and by state, except a chart over time (other than changes), which goes by chain. A list usually shows the top 10. Ask for more, up to 50.

What it can't answer#

Ask only knows what's on the shelf. It has no sales, units, revenue or market share, no shopper reviews or ratings, no store visits, no wholesale or trade terms, and nothing off the shelf, such as the weather, the news, share prices, recipes or sport. It doesn't write emails or translate.

It only answers about products on your list: yours, your rivals and the store brands you compare against. To ask about another product, add it first. See Products.

When a question is outside the data, Ask says "We don't have" what you asked for, says what it does have, and offers questions it can answer. Click one to ask it.

What an answer shows#

An answer is always laid out the same way:

1. One sentence that answers the question, with the key number. Every number in it comes from the answer's own numbers.
2. One big number, with its change from a week earlier when there is one. Or a chart: a line for anything over time, bars to compare chains, states, stores, products or brands, and stacked bars for how a count splits over time. Or a table, for a list of changes. Never a pie.
3. What this means: up to three short points, each with a number from the answer, and one next step, such as opening a store or a product, setting an alert, asking about another chain, or Export as CSV.
4. The small print: the period, the chains and states, how many stores were counted, and where stock, price or ranging isn't read, or is read at only some of a chain's stores. The points under What this means never draw a conclusion from a chain that's only partly read.
5. Questions to ask next: two or three of them, as buttons. Click one to ask it.

Use the numbers#

Under every chart or table:

• Show as table opens the numbers behind a chart. Hide table closes them.
• Copy copies the table, ready to paste into a spreadsheet.
• CSV downloads the table. The file is named after your question.
• PNG saves the chart as a picture.
• PDF prints the page, with the table under the chart.

Australian and New Zealand prices#

A price at an Australian chain is in Australian dollars ($). A price at a New Zealand chain is in New Zealand dollars (NZ$) in the sentence and on the chart. The table and its CSV hold plain numbers. See Prices in New Zealand.

Ask never puts the two currencies in one number or side by side. If a price question covers chains in both countries, for example a list of your products that sell in both, Ask answers each country on its own: the Australian chains' prices in $, then the New Zealand chains' in NZ$, each with its own chart or table, and offers the same question for each country's chains to look closer. Where it can't split them (a product with no chain to name), it says the two can't be combined and offers each country's question instead.

How far back it goes#

• Your plan's history. Ask reaches back as far as your plan does: 90 days on Solo, 12 months on Brand, and full history on Growth and Enterprise. See History.
• Store counts across several products, day by day. "Stores ranged" or "stores on promo" over time for more than one product covers the last 30 days. Ask about a period that ends earlier and it says it doesn't have it. A period that starts earlier is cut to the last 30 days, and the small print shows the dates it covers. For one product, the series goes back as far as your plan does.
• Out of stock over time for several products counts listings, not stores: a store out of two of your products counts twice. The chart says "Out-of-stock listings" when it does.

Fair use and when Ask pauses#

Ask is included on every plan with no limit on the number of questions, under fair use. A trial has a smaller allowance than a paid plan. See Plans and limits.

Ask can pause. When it does, it says why, and search and its quick answers keep working:

If Ask can't answer for another reason, it says "Ask couldn't answer just now". Try again in a minute.

What Ask never does#

• It never answers from products, chains or history your brand can't see in the app. It sees the products on your list, the chains your plan includes (see Retailer groups) and your plan's history.
• It never sees other customers' lists, alerts or questions, and they never see yours.
• It never makes a number up: every number on the screen is worked out from the shelf data, and the words may only use those numbers.

Your questions#

To answer, your question and the shelf data needed for it are sent to the AI model providers we use, which process them under their own terms. We don't use your questions or your data to train AI models of our own. A question Ask can't answer may be kept for up to 90 days, linked to your brand's account, so we can learn what to add. Our product analytics record whether a question was answered and the chart it got, never the question's words. See our privacy policy.

The sample brand#

The sample brand has no Ask: there's no real shelf to ask about. Its Ask page says "Ask answers about your own products, and the sample brand has none."