> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.retailgrid.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Product roles

> Classify every SKU into an explainable product role - KVI, Traffic Driver, Profit Driver, Niche, Tail, or New - so pricing, promo, and monitoring can treat the SKUs that matter differently.

A **product role** says what a SKU *does* for your business - whether it drives footfall, carries margin, or just rounds out the range. Retailgrid can classify every SKU into a role automatically, so your pricing rules, promo planning, and competitor monitoring can act differently on the SKUs that actually matter - without you maintaining role tags by hand.

## The roles

Every SKU gets one of six roles, or sits in **Unclassified** until there's enough signal to place it:

| Role                       | What it is                                                                                                               |
| :------------------------- | :----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **KVI** (Known Value Item) | Price-sensitive items shoppers recognize and use to judge whether you're cheap. Watch these against competitors closely. |
| **Traffic Driver**         | High-visibility items that pull shoppers in. Priced to compete, not to maximize margin.                                  |
| **Profit Driver**          | Items that carry your margin. Less price-sensitive, so there's room to hold or lift price.                               |
| **Niche**                  | Specialist items with a narrow, loyal audience and little competitive pressure.                                          |
| **Tail**                   | Long-tail, low-volume items that fill out the assortment.                                                                |
| **New**                    | Recently introduced items without enough sales history to classify yet.                                                  |
| **Unclassified**           | Items the classifier can't place into a role yet - as opposed to New, which is specifically newly introduced items.      |

## Classify your assortment

The **Product Role Classification** agent assigns a role to every SKU in a grid:

1. Click **Agents** in the grid toolbar.
2. Select **Product Role Classification** from the All Agents modal.
3. Run it. The agent reads each SKU's sales and margin signal and writes a **Product Role** column back to the grid.

The defaults work out of the box. For teams that want to tune how aggressively SKUs fall into each role, an **Advanced Settings** panel exposes the classification thresholds, each with sensible bounds.

Roles are a starting point, not a verdict - review them and **pin** the role on any SKU you'd set differently. A pinned role sticks through re-classification and is kept in an audit trail, so a later run won't quietly overwrite it. Because the role is a normal grid column, you can filter, group, and colour by it like any other.

## How roles are used

* **Pricing rules** - scope a [Dynamic Pricing](/agents/dynamic-pricing) rule to a role using conditions (a tighter competitor-parity rule for KVIs, a firmer margin floor for Profit Drivers), or use the role column as the group in a Price Relations rule.
* **Pricing Strategy** - the [Pricing Strategy](/agents/pricing-strategy) deck frames its category-role narrative around these roles.
* **Monitoring** - filter a grid to KVIs or Traffic Drivers to watch the SKUs where price position matters most.

## Common pitfalls

* **Thin history** - SKUs with little sales history land in **New** or **Unclassified** until there's enough signal. Re-run once more data has loaded.
* **Roles drift** - an item's role can change as demand shifts. Re-classify periodically rather than treating a one-time run as permanent.
* **Review before you act** - the classifier gives a structured guess. Confirm the roles on your highest-impact SKUs, and pin the ones you're sure of, before you scope pricing rules to them.

## Related

* [Agents overview](/agents/overview)
* [Dynamic Pricing](/agents/dynamic-pricing)
* [Pricing Strategy](/agents/pricing-strategy)
* [Add columns](/grids/manage-columns)