Feb 27, 2025 9:37:27 PM
Customer experience | Retail
Feb 27, 2025 9:37:27 PM
Customer experience | Retail
What if the biggest factor in your store’s success wasn’t location, product assortment, or even foot traffic — but the person running it?
Research from the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago analyzed two major retail chains and found that individual store managers account for 25-35% of productivity differences between locations.
The study tracked manager transfers across stores, isolating their direct impact on performance.
The findings make one thing clear: A great manager can transform a store, while a weak one can quietly drain its potential.
Let’s break down the findings — and what they mean for the future of retail leadership.
What You'll Learn in This Article
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The study found that swapping a low-performing manager (bottom 10%) for a high-performing one (top 10%) increases store productivity by 50-100%.
That’s the equivalent of adding an extra full-time employee — without hiring anyone.
The Problem
Despite this, many retailers don’t have systems in place to measure individual manager impact. Instead, they rely on broad store-level performance metrics that fail to isolate how much of a store’s success — or struggles — comes down to the person leading it.
As a result:
What Retailers Should Be Doing
To truly understand managerial impact, retailers need better tracking systems and data-driven evaluation methods. That means shifting from subjective decision-making to performance-based leadership development.
One of the study’s most surprising insights? High-performing managers are often placed in struggling stores. This makes sense at first glance — companies want strong leaders to turn around weak locations.
However, the research suggests that this reactive approach overlooks a major opportunity: If retailers placed top managers in already-successful stores, they could see company-wide sales increase by 2-6%.
The Problem
While placing strong leaders in low-performing stores can help stabilize them, it often prevents top managers from achieving their full potential. Retailers spend time fixing underperforming locations while missing out on compounding gains in high-performing stores.
As a result:
What Retailers Should Be Doing
To optimize business performance, retailers need to rethink how they deploy their best talent.
The study found that manager quality doesn’t just impact sales — it drives broader operational efficiencies.
For example:
The Problem
Retailers often see sales as the primary measure of success, but they underestimate how much great managers improve efficiency, morale, and crisis preparedness. When companies fail to recognize these factors, they:
To build resilient, high-performing teams, retailers must prioritize manager development and empowerment.
The research is clear: Managers can make or break store performance. Retailers need to track, support, and empower their frontline leaders to maximize store performance.
What top retailers are doing differently:
Great managers don’t just drive sales — they create more productive teams, stronger store operations, and higher employee engagement. But without the right tools, even the best leaders can struggle to reach their full potential.
YOOBIC helps retailers track, support, and empower store managers with AI-driven insights, real-time execution tools, and mobile-first training — so they can lead more effectively and maximize store performance.
With YOOBIC, retailers can:
Ready to see how YOOBIC drives results for top retailers like Michaels, Mattress Firm, Ralph Lauren, Pilot Flying J, and Lidl?
Attend one of our 20-minute interactive live demos. No slides, no sales pitch — just real solutions for real challenges.
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See why 350+ businesses are using YOOBIC
YOOBIC creates a better everyday working experience for frontline teams while helping businesses drive performance at scale.