Dupe Culture At The Supermarket: Sales Of Store-Brand Products Up By 4%

Sales of private-label products, more commonly referred to as store brands, rose by 4% over the last year, according to the Private Label Manufacturers Association.

The $9 billion increase, which brought sales of private label products to a record $271 billion, is caused by a number of factors, according to CNBC.

“The quality, value, and innovation that store brands provide can’t be beat,” PLMA President Peggy Davies said in a statement. A survey by market research company First Insight backs her assessment.

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According to First Insight’s “The Quiet Takeover of the Private Label” study released in January, 84% of shoppers now trust the quality of store brand products just as much, or more than, the quality of name-brand products. Additionally, 72% of shoppers are unable to tell apart private-label products and name-brand products, and 47% of shoppers have intentionally tried out a private-label product because it was duping a name-brand product.

“Companies are savvy in how they market,” First Insight CEO Greg Petro told CNBC. “It’s not just consumers that can be fooled, it’s experts.”

Rochester Institute of Technology packaging design professor Bruce Myers told CNBC that many stores are improving the aesthetics of their private-label products in order to indicate to consumers that “their brands as equal or better quality at a better price.” This is a drastic change from a few decades ago when stores were scaling back on packaging in order to indicate that they were “passing the savings on to you.”

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Of course, price still remains a significant factor in the appeal of private-label products.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, grocery store prices have risen 23% over the last five years. Michael Swanson, Wells Fargo’s Agri-Food Institute chief agricultural economist, told CNBC that the average household’s spending power has outpaced this increase, but points out that consumers “really are very bad at tracking the relative change of those two things.”