That marks a change of decades, when supermarkets would use low -cost packaging and a stripped brand to send the message that “the savings were passing,” Myers explained.
For a long time it has been common for some brand brands and private label operators to share manufacturers of certain products, which means that many of their competitive packages contain the same products. The difference is that although Nabisco or General Mills, for example, they have to spend on marketing and storage placement rates for their items, Aldi or Costco do not.
But the basic packaging associated with private goods is increasingly the past of the past, sometimes replaced by approaches that criticize brand competitors. Last month, Mondelēz International demanded Aldi, claiming a registered trademark infraction. The snack manufacturer accused the “blatantly” discount supermarket by copying the oreos packaging, Wheat Thins, Nilla Wafers and Ritz Crackers for their private label alternatives.
But in other cases, even the brands of stores that do not resemble known rivals have enough attractiveness to attract buyers for their own merit. The result is eroding loyalty to the brand for the main headlines. In the First Insight survey, 47% of buyers said they tested a store brand specifically because it was a “misleading” of a brand product, and 84% said they now trust the quality of private labels at least as much as national brands.
The price, of course, remains a key factor in the attractiveness of private labels.
During the worst of the period after the pandemic in inflation, the giants of consumer goods such as Procter & Gamble raised prices to customers. Given the most steep costs of the grunts of the supply chain and the shortage of labor, many companies will bet that buyers would disburse more to continue with the products they knew and liked. And for some years, many of their customers better scars did exactly that. But the winds have changed, and in recent years buyers have been prioritizing value.
“They are saying: ‘What I am paying for what I am getting is not worth it,'” said Petro.
After an earlier series of cereal prices, snack bars and pet food, General Mills said last week that his main approach is now in the volume of juice sales. “To do that, we will invest more in the value of the consumer,” said his CEO to investors.
Michael Swanson, main agriculture economist at the Agri-food Institute of Wells Fargo, said that grocery wars depend largely on what buyers pay attention.
When you look at the prices of the raw label on the store shelves, it is easy to notice how sudden they have climbed. The prices of the groceries have increased more than 23% in the last five years, but the average spending power of households has overcome it, he said. In “real” or adjusted inflation terms, groceries are widely cheaper than they have been in years. (While surely it did not feel that way for many families, the thanksgiving of 2024 was the most affordable in almost 40 years, according to agricultural data).
“Every time you get a salary increase, that’s good. Every time you see that your favorite food goes up, that’s something bad,” Swanson said. “But we really are very bad in monitoring the relative change of those two things.”
Even so, Swanson does not expect the decrease in the loyalty of the brand of buyers or the search for low prices to push the products of the brand name of the supermarket shelves in the short term. In fact, groceries generally depend on brand products to establish price points for customers, he said.
“The only reason he knows that the private label is a value is because he looks at him right next to the refrigerator section and that something more is 25 or 40% more expensive,” Swanson said.
