Distribution metrics quantify the availability of products sold through retailers, usually as a percentage of all potential outlets.
Balancing a firm's efforts in “push” (building and maintaining reseller and distribution support) and “pull” (generating customer demand) is an ongoing strategic concern for marketers.
[1] Numeric distribution measures a firm's ability to convey a product to its customers in terms of total number of outlets carrying the brand.
The main use of metric distribution is to understand how many physical locations stock a product or brand.
[1] To calculate numeric distribution, marketers divide the number of stores that stock at least one SKU of a product or brand by the number of outlets in the relevant market: