What does the term “store brand” mean to you? Here in the UK, it usually means goods that are branded with the name of the store - Tesco Basmati Rice, Morrisons Caffeine Free Cola etc. These are decent quality products, not necessarily inferior to their brand-name equivalents, but the labelling on all of them has the same logo and the same general design as other store brand products.
The supermarket chains here tend to have several levels of branding, offering different price vs. quality choices. Sainsbury’s, for example, has its regular range, an economy Basics range with plainer packaging, and a more upmarket Taste the Difference range. All of these ranges, however, are clearly labelled as Sainsbury’s products. Since I’m more of a Tesco man, I can look in my fridge and food cupboards and see dozens of products called Tesco this and Tesco that.
Recently, in reaction to price competition from the likes of Aldi, some chains have launched store brands that do not carry the chain’s name, instead having kind of generic made-up brand names like Golden Harvest or Sunny Meadow or whatever, with packaging and labelling that does not follow any standard design.
I get the impression that this latter form of branding is what is usually meant by “store branding” in the US. Correct?
Both are meant. The latter is sometimes called private label. The reasons for it are manifold, and there are many stores that doe as you describe things being done in England. A local/regional chain known as Lowes Foods just has a Lowes Food brand. They are, in fact, often higher quality than the national brand they are imitating/competeing with.
Aldi really has very little to do with it, especially when you move up out of the ‘budget’ segement. It is a matter of profits. I work for a food manufacturer, and we do a lot of these type of partnerships with chains.
Actually what you describe sounds pretty much the same. You used to be able to buy (for example) Safeway brand beans and cookies, which all had a simple matching design and were cheaper and pretty good quality. Without having to pay for advertising, store brands could often sell the same quality-sometimes even better–for less money. Frequently the products came from the same plants as the fancier brands.
Now, in an attempt to look more upscale, store brands usually have a name and a logo–my local brand is Sunny Select. The design still matches, but it’s a little fancier. This transition has only happened in the last couple of years and is probably still in progress, depending on what store you’re in.
Both usages exist in the U.S. but the “faux brand” approach is becoming more common when the product is not a “staple” item. For example, if you go to the grocery section in Target, you’ll find Target brand blocks of cheese and deli meats, Target brand milk, etc. But the fancy cookies, whole bean coffee, and frozen mini-quiches are branded “Archer Farms” which is just a Target store brand.
So, if someone in the U.S. were to say, “I only buy the store brand mayo anymore; it costs less and it’s just a good as Hellman’s” (blasphemy!) they might be talking about a literal store brand (“Target mayo”) or a faux brand (“Archer Farms mayo”).
“Store brand” to me means any brand I can only get at one store. IIRC, Wal-Mart has “Great Value” brand, Harris Teeter has “Your Home” brand, that kind of thing.
To a degree. To take Wal-Mart, for instance, there is no “Wal-Mart” brand, but they do have many private labels, including Sam’s Choice (its premium brand) and Great Value, its second-tier brand. Some other brands include Athletic Works, Faded Glory, No Boundaries, Puritan (all clothes), HomeTrends, Mainstays (home furnishings), and Equate (pharmaceuticals). None are conspicuously labelled as Wal-Mart brands, and each have their own label designs.
That said, many other stores have labels with their names emblazoned on them.
I think we have pretty much the same thing, depending on the store. H.E.B., my local supermarket chain, sells it’s lower end store brand stuff under the name Hill Country Fare. For mid level stuff it puts the H.E.B. name on the packaging, and for the better quality they use the Central Market name.
Walmart also splits its store brands into Great Value for the lower end and Sam’s Choice for the higher, although I’m pretty sure a lot of times it’s the same thing with a different label.
That’s interesting. Here, Tesco’s “private label” initiative is recent and definitely related to their concern about competition from Aldi et al. They put a “Discount Brand” logo on some of these weird new products, and the promotional labelling on the shelves sometimes explicitly says things like “cheaper than Aldi”.
They have long had private labelling in clothing, electrical and other departments, rather like WalMart by the sound of it, but this branching into their core food products is something new.
It is possible that this is simply a factor of the types of chains we interact with. Usually what happens is we work with the customer who has good sales from a product, say Brand X chicken sandwiches, but Brand X is a national brand and they can charge a premium for that. What the customer (grocer) wants is a chicken sandwich just like Brand X’s that they can sell for a quarter or 50 cent cheaper and make a larger profit on. We can usually do that for them. The lower price isn’t so much about competing with the Aldis and other low price chains as it is about giving consumers incentive to purchase the store brand vs. the national brand. At least with our products, both our sales and our customer feedback indicate that those consumers who try it often prefer our product.
It’s been interesting for me, I’ve never liked store brand/private label until I started working here and realized that in many, many cases the quality is just as good or better. I also think that the move toward the store brand’s being more upscale is a fairly recent phenomenon (5 - 7 years or so), but I’m not a marketing guy.
Several years ago I attended an interesting little evening where a guy had a whole table of brand name and store brand products, and he opened them all up and compared them. Once you opened, say, a can of Del Monte green beans and a can of store green beans, you could easily see that the store brand ones were better–smaller and had no stems, whereas Del Monte beans often did have stems left on. And so on.
I work for a major US retailer and we have more than 20 names for our private label items. Some items, we phased out our store-named versions for newer designs and names so it looks like a premium brand. In some cases, it’s worked very well.
In my experience the quality varies with the type of product. Some store brand food items may be as good or even better than their national brand counterparts; but things like large trash bags and paper products are much, much worse. As has been noted, the stores are switching to made-up brand names that sometimes border on the inane. I think it’s Albertsons that sells pet supplies and food under the Pet Pride label. Every time I see that, I think–my cats aren’t proud of their litter. It makes no sense.
The store brands are frequently made by the name brands. I know, for example there is a widespread belief that Kirkland (Costco store brand) Vodka is made by the makers of Grey Goose and is about half the price.
Before I had ever been to an Aldi myself, a friend of mine convinced me that it was just aisle after aisle of fluorescent lighting and black-Arial-on-white-packaging (“MILK”, “TOOTHPASTE”, “COLA”) for as far as the eye could see. I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever heard. Needless to say, it was kind of disappointing when I did finally go and see it was just run-of-the-mill private label trade dress.
As far as hiding the fact that, say, Archer Farms is actually just the Target store brand, I’ll note the Meijer prominently labels their products as Meijer brand and actively promotes it as the equal (or superior) to national brands (“Not just Meijer Brand. A Better Brand.”)
The Lowe’s chain based in Texas (I often shopped at the one up the street from my house in Las Cruces) had the store brand and also carried the Western Family and Shur Fine private labels. I think you can get Kroger-labeled products at Smith’s. When I lived in New Mexico (a state with actually reasonable liquor laws–stupid East Coast), I generally bought only the Albertson’s branded liquor–quite good for what I was using it for (in mixers, mostly.)
