Broad appeal for private-label goods... and the brand

This morning, friend and fellow trend-watcher JoAnne Naganawa from Seattle sent me a link to this Media Post Marketing Daily story… explaining how diverse the appeal of private-label goods has become. (The focus of the article is now both Gen Y and Affluent consumers are gravitating to the goods.)

Funny… but about the same time, I was reading the actual Nielsen briefing cited in that story. Click here to read the report, “Store Brands Flex Their Muscles,” courtesy of Nielsen.

Implications: For all of the press given to the shift toward store brands, one graphic from the Nielsen briefing was particularly telling: It is a small but devoted group of heavy users that drive most private-label sales. See this graphic for an illustration of what I’ll call “the heavy-user effect.”

Further, while store brands may have gained ground during the recession, name-brand products still dominate most categories, according to another graphic from the report. Click here to see it.

I leave this research reminded that there is room for both products on the shelf: Those which focus on quality, and those which focus on cost.

Mike Anderson