June 9, 2026
teamtime/Depositphotos.com
Sephora, Trader Joe’s, and Target See High Stockout Complaints: What’s the Answer?
Out-of-stocks or stockouts are a persistent problem in retail, whether physical or digital, and new data provided by a recent DOSS report indicates that the issue isn’t a stagnant one.
Surveying 1,000 U.S. consumers and comprehensively analyzing stockout language found across social media platform Reddit, the report indicates that consumers have some tolerance for stockouts — but that patience isn’t exhaustive.
“Nearly three-quarters (74%) of consumers encountered an out-of-stock product they regularly buy in the past 12 months. On average, shoppers hit stockouts three times a year when shopping online. When a stockout happens, 45% buy from a different retailer and 32% switch to a competing brand temporarily,” the report authors wrote.
“About 62% of consumers said they have switched to a competing brand at least once because of a stockout, and 82% said they would try a competitor if their go-to is frequently out of stock. A quarter (25%) said stockouts specifically damaged their trust in a brand. More than 1 in 20 (6%) have gone further, leaving a negative review because of a stockout or fulfillment issue,” the research team added.
Other key stats pulled from the report include:
- Food and grocery tops the list on out-of-stocks: On the question of which categories saw the highest likelihood of stockouts facing shoppers, food and grocery came in at No. 1 (53%), with beauty and personal care coming in second (22%). Clothing, shoes, and jewelry took third place (14%), followed by electronics (13%), makeup and cosmetics (8%), and home, garden and tools (7%). The primacy of food and grocery could explain why 52% of shoppers simply wait for an item to return to shelves (52%), while 45% buy the product from a competing retailer (45%).
- Complaints give a bit of a pass to grocery, while fashion and apparel are scrutinized: Utilizing the percentage of relevant Reddit posts centered around stockout complaints, fashion and apparel saw the most activity (7.9%) with beauty and personal care close behind (7.5%) and electronics tucked away in third (7.4%). Grocery and food saw a 5.7% complaint rate, which is interesting given its primacy in terms of customers commonly facing stockouts, while mass retail came in at 4.2%. “Stockouts have an even greater impact on fashion and beauty products than many other categories because so many people buy these items based on trends, routines or what makes them unique. When a particular skin care product, color, size or limited release item is out of stock; consumers do not view this as simply being inconvenienced. Consumers perceive that something about their daily routine and/or identity has been impacted,” said Sebastiaan Debrouwere, VP of Business Development & Marketing at DOSS.
- Sephora sees the most out-of-stock complaints online: By the same metrics, Sephora took the lead in stockout complaints (12.8% of relevant threads), with Alo Yoga (12%) and Lululemon (11.6%) claiming the next spots. In food and grocery, Trader Joe’s led the pack (11.6%), followed by Costco (6.6%) and Whole Foods (2.4%). In mass retail, Target took the stockout complains crown (6.6%), followed by Amazon (4%), surprisingly categorized Sam’s Club (4%), and Walmart (2%). “[Continuing from above,] This explains why Sephora was at the top of our list for retailers by stockout complaint rates (at 12.8%) when we analyzed social media posts containing stockout-related words. Additionally, these categories run on limited releases, shade and size variants, and short replenishment windows – the exact conditions where a system that can’t track inventory in real-time across channels will show ‘available’ on something that’s already gone,” Debrouwere added.
When it comes to solutions, Debrouwere leaned on the study data alongside industry experience to offer a few takes.
“Stockouts are no longer seen as a one-off or short-term problem with availability. The shopper data now indicates that stockouts increase consideration of alternative products and may ultimately lead to abandonment of the original brand. If 82% of consumers indicate they would seek out an alternative to their primary brand due to frequent unavailability of their preferred item, it’s unreasonable for retailers to expect their customers to continue waiting for what they need. Therefore, retailers should utilize stronger systems for real-time inventory monitoring, which in turn enables brands to communicate more clearly about when products will again be available (and when),” he said.
“In practice, a large share of what gets recorded as a stockout is actually a visibility program – the inventory exists somewhere in the network, but procurement, warehousing, 3PLs, and sales channels are working off of different numbers, and as a consequence, are missing the sale,” he concluded.
BrainTrust
Tanya Thorson
Revenue & Customer Growth Leader, StrategiX Marketing
Neil Saunders
Managing Director, GlobalData
Mohamed Amer, PhD
Strategy Advisor, CEO & Co-Founder, BridgeCommAI
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
Do you believe that stockouts or out-of-stocks are as dangerous to brands (and to some degree, retailers) as suggested by the data? Why or why not?
When it comes to higher rates of stockout complaints around certain categories (beauty, fashion) or brands/retailers (Sephora, Trader Joe’s), what can be done to mitigate these problems? What’s not working?
Can you give an example of a brand / retailer which is excelling at preventing stockouts, or perhaps even more importantly, customer complaints surrounding out-of-stocks? What’s their secret?
Poll
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I am not entirely sure that Reddit is a solid measure of the true extent of out-of-stocks. Our data from store checks and web scraping shows that Target has major issues on this front – though it has improved recently. Walmart and Amazon are in a much better position and stock-outs are far lower as a proportion of products and transactions. Trader Joe’s has a smaller footprint which can cause stock problems as they don’t have huge stockrooms. The more interesting thing, however, is the response to out of stocks. Trader Joe’s doesn’t suffer much as the proposition is compelling and customers don’t really want to defect, so they substitute instead. Target is different. People are much more prepared to go to rivals because more of the mission is essentials focused, and other aspects of the experience have also fallen short of late.
I suspect most readers will see this as a “which one doesn’t fit?” (The answer is Target: Sephora and TJ’s have out-of-stocks because of the popularity of their products, whereas Target’s problems are due to incompetent logistics managment)
But back to the actual question: yes, excessive OOS are a problem; so what’s “excessive”? When people are annoyed enough that they actually take the trouble to make a complaint (by whatever means). The logical remedy is simply to have more inventory, but of course it isn’t really that simple, as there’s a cost to having a store full of goods sitting around. Managing these tradeoffs requires having good valuation systems, not just of the tangible stocking costs, but of customer goodwill as well.
Stockouts should be a concern for retailers, but the impact depends on the product, how frequently it happens, and how quickly inventory can be replenished. When it becomes a recurring issue, retailers risk losing shoppers to changing habits and competing brands. In categories where products are tied to preference and routine, like beauty and fashion, repeated stockouts can erode loyalty much faster.
Yes, stockouts are dangerous, but the real damage depends on the strength of the retailer’s relationship with the customer.
A stockout at Trader Joe’s can feel different because discovery is part of the trip. The customer may substitute because the experience still delivers value. At Target, where more of the trip is essentials-driven, the customer came with intent. If the item is missing, the trip feels broken.
That is the piece retailers need to take seriously. This is not just an inventory issue. It is a customer experience issue, a trust issue, and a relevance issue.
From a merchant lens, availability is part of the product promise. The right item, right size, right shade, right channel, right moment. When that breaks, the customer does not think about supply chain complexity. They think, “You didn’t have what I came for.”
Beauty and fashion raise the stakes because the purchase is tied to routine, identity, fit, confidence, and timing. A missing shade or size is personal. That is where loyalty starts to leak.
The answer is not more noise. It is better operating discipline. Inventory, merchandising, digital, stores, vendors, and marketing need to work from one customer view and one version of the truth.
Customers can forgive an occasional miss. They are far less forgiving when the brand looks unaware, disconnected, or unprepared.
Availability is part of relevance. And relevance has a short shelf life.
Great point about intent vs discovery. Goes to the heart of how the customer views the magnitude of the problem. If they came with high intent and there is no reasonable substitute avialable, that’s a wasted trip, wasted time. If that happens often enough, both the brand and the retailer could pay the price for that…a substitute product at a different retailer.
Not all stockouts are equal. A hero SKU driving 30% of category volume going dark is a crisis. A long-tail item unavailable for a week is noise. Operators who treat them identically misallocate capital and attention. The one number worth acting on: 25% of shoppers say stockouts damaged their trust in a brand. In beauty and fashion, where purchases are tied to routine and identity, a missing shade or size is personal. Loyalty erodes faster there than anywhere else.
What the report misses: most stockouts are phantom inventory failures. The product exists in the network, but stores, DC, and digital are working off different numbers. That is a systems problem, not a replenishment problem. The stakes are about to get higher. AI shopping agents filter on real-time availability before surfacing any recommendation. Chronic stockouts will not just lose a sale. They will make a brand invisible.
I’m a little surprised reading that out-of-stocks are as big a problem as the article suggests. Sure, I experience out-of-stocks at the sku level every now and then, but I usually shrug it off to being a natural part of retail. I substitute or wait. I still spend what I intended to spend, either on an alternative, or by waiting for my first choice. The bigger issue I notice is lapses in seasonal conversion, where whole portions of the floor are left empty waiting for the new seasonal delivery, maybe even while markdown racks are clogged with prior season inventory. That’s a whole different magnitude of out-of-stock, but it seems to me to be the bigger $$$ problem with respect to lost sales.
In food and grocery, one the biggest eyesores are empty slots for a specific brand or flavor. When this happens, stores reface the hole, making aisles look nicer, but to the customer, an open loop exists with no communication around what happened. This becomes a hassle because it’s often not a simple replacement of one yellow mustard brand for another, instead something more specific needed, preferred. So customers doubt and wonder, is the product not coming back? Did the product/CPG company opt to leave? When is it coming back?
Since the key is to keep customers from wandering to a competitor, you can either redirect them to a better or different product. But one of the best action items is posting small shelf signage for out-of-stock items lasting more than one week. For the longer term, having a secondary or a third supplier who will respond is always a good plan to ensure most products get replenished quickly.
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I am not entirely sure that Reddit is a solid measure of the true extent of out-of-stocks. Our data from store checks and web scraping shows that Target has major issues on this front – though it has improved recently. Walmart and Amazon are in a much better position and stock-outs are far lower as a proportion of products and transactions. Trader Joe’s has a smaller footprint which can cause stock problems as they don’t have huge stockrooms. The more interesting thing, however, is the response to out of stocks. Trader Joe’s doesn’t suffer much as the proposition is compelling and customers don’t really want to defect, so they substitute instead. Target is different. People are much more prepared to go to rivals because more of the mission is essentials focused, and other aspects of the experience have also fallen short of late.
I suspect most readers will see this as a “which one doesn’t fit?” (The answer is Target: Sephora and TJ’s have out-of-stocks because of the popularity of their products, whereas Target’s problems are due to incompetent logistics managment)
But back to the actual question: yes, excessive OOS are a problem; so what’s “excessive”? When people are annoyed enough that they actually take the trouble to make a complaint (by whatever means). The logical remedy is simply to have more inventory, but of course it isn’t really that simple, as there’s a cost to having a store full of goods sitting around. Managing these tradeoffs requires having good valuation systems, not just of the tangible stocking costs, but of customer goodwill as well.
Stockouts should be a concern for retailers, but the impact depends on the product, how frequently it happens, and how quickly inventory can be replenished. When it becomes a recurring issue, retailers risk losing shoppers to changing habits and competing brands. In categories where products are tied to preference and routine, like beauty and fashion, repeated stockouts can erode loyalty much faster.
Yes, stockouts are dangerous, but the real damage depends on the strength of the retailer’s relationship with the customer.
A stockout at Trader Joe’s can feel different because discovery is part of the trip. The customer may substitute because the experience still delivers value. At Target, where more of the trip is essentials-driven, the customer came with intent. If the item is missing, the trip feels broken.
That is the piece retailers need to take seriously. This is not just an inventory issue. It is a customer experience issue, a trust issue, and a relevance issue.
From a merchant lens, availability is part of the product promise. The right item, right size, right shade, right channel, right moment. When that breaks, the customer does not think about supply chain complexity. They think, “You didn’t have what I came for.”
Beauty and fashion raise the stakes because the purchase is tied to routine, identity, fit, confidence, and timing. A missing shade or size is personal. That is where loyalty starts to leak.
The answer is not more noise. It is better operating discipline. Inventory, merchandising, digital, stores, vendors, and marketing need to work from one customer view and one version of the truth.
Customers can forgive an occasional miss. They are far less forgiving when the brand looks unaware, disconnected, or unprepared.
Availability is part of relevance. And relevance has a short shelf life.
Great point about intent vs discovery. Goes to the heart of how the customer views the magnitude of the problem. If they came with high intent and there is no reasonable substitute avialable, that’s a wasted trip, wasted time. If that happens often enough, both the brand and the retailer could pay the price for that…a substitute product at a different retailer.
Not all stockouts are equal. A hero SKU driving 30% of category volume going dark is a crisis. A long-tail item unavailable for a week is noise. Operators who treat them identically misallocate capital and attention. The one number worth acting on: 25% of shoppers say stockouts damaged their trust in a brand. In beauty and fashion, where purchases are tied to routine and identity, a missing shade or size is personal. Loyalty erodes faster there than anywhere else.
What the report misses: most stockouts are phantom inventory failures. The product exists in the network, but stores, DC, and digital are working off different numbers. That is a systems problem, not a replenishment problem. The stakes are about to get higher. AI shopping agents filter on real-time availability before surfacing any recommendation. Chronic stockouts will not just lose a sale. They will make a brand invisible.
I’m a little surprised reading that out-of-stocks are as big a problem as the article suggests. Sure, I experience out-of-stocks at the sku level every now and then, but I usually shrug it off to being a natural part of retail. I substitute or wait. I still spend what I intended to spend, either on an alternative, or by waiting for my first choice. The bigger issue I notice is lapses in seasonal conversion, where whole portions of the floor are left empty waiting for the new seasonal delivery, maybe even while markdown racks are clogged with prior season inventory. That’s a whole different magnitude of out-of-stock, but it seems to me to be the bigger $$$ problem with respect to lost sales.
In food and grocery, one the biggest eyesores are empty slots for a specific brand or flavor. When this happens, stores reface the hole, making aisles look nicer, but to the customer, an open loop exists with no communication around what happened. This becomes a hassle because it’s often not a simple replacement of one yellow mustard brand for another, instead something more specific needed, preferred. So customers doubt and wonder, is the product not coming back? Did the product/CPG company opt to leave? When is it coming back?
Since the key is to keep customers from wandering to a competitor, you can either redirect them to a better or different product. But one of the best action items is posting small shelf signage for out-of-stock items lasting more than one week. For the longer term, having a secondary or a third supplier who will respond is always a good plan to ensure most products get replenished quickly.