my understanding is that the numeric distribtion illustrates the reach of brandABC on retail level (no.

of retailers who handle brandABC/ all retailers in the universe) while weighted distribution tells about the sales contribution of all retailers (ie. total sales volume of brandABC by all handling retailers/ total sales volume of brandABC from all channels eg. online, direct marketing, B2B)

The terms have several applications in the fields of marketing, marketing research as well as market research, so it can be confusing. For example, when you apply factors or percentagess to the tallys from your survey data to force the results to be representative of or directly comparable to your control or real world distribution, a process called weighting, the product is weighted distribution. When you mention "retail", we probably want to stick with AC Neilson type of terminology which deal with analysis of distribution channels and market coverage. Here again the terms have been messed with by the sales gremlins but in a nutshell, you are correct, numeric distribution is the number of outlets in a given marketplace who carry or sell a particular brand, divided by the total number of outlets in the marketplace. For example if there are ten clothing outlets, and three sell Mallard brand jeans the numeric distrbution would be 30% or 10% per outlet. You are incorrect about weighted distribution, you do not bring in other channels. Weighted distribution factors in the relative share or importance of each individual outlet and their impact on the market. For example, we find that of the three outlets which sell our brand, two are specialty shops with 1% share of marketplce and the the other is a big box retailer with 60% share of total retail in that marketplace. you would express your weighted distribution as 62%. Both numeric and weighted are expressions of the same marketplace and include the same channels so that they can be comparable and relevant in retail analysis. They help the marketer focus their efforts and support. Be warned, some analysts confuse weighted distribution with "net effective distribution" which is actually a step beyond the analysis of one channel or marketplace and a method of comparing one channel (ie retail) against another (ie. on-line).