Linear Feet vs Square Ft

In looking at Space to Sales, when would you use % Square instead of % Linear? Does anyone have examples of where using square has been beneficial?

Square is calculated by multiplying width * depth. Linear is just a measurement of the width without factoring in the height or depth of the position.

The only thing that comes to my mind regarding your question would be for those frozen food vendors that sell their product in those open-topped coffin freezers, also called cases. The consumer looks down on the product so in this case all the suppliers compete for facings wide and deep instead of height and width which is what most suppliers compete for on standard shelf fixtures.

Personally I use cubic measures in most of my space analysis because it looks at width and height which I refer to as "billboard space". It's the total viewable space of your product. It does calculate the depth of the positions too so to be fair in your analysis all of the items should be sitting on the same depth of shelf with the items filled all the way back.