QUICK READ:
- With the accelerated sales growth of private-label consumer products annual sales are growing faster than national brand sales and have effectively disrupted the category.
- Consumers are increasing their spending on private label products and have become “much more willing to splurge on store brands than they would for name brands,” according to Nielsen.
- The success of store brands in the mass channel is posing a big challenge for national brands.
Store brands are winning the battle of retail and national brands are losing market share. Private label sales have become so profitable for retailers that they are expanding sales into categories like wine and beer.
Why?
1ne: Consumers are outsmarting marketers and want to save money.
2wo: The economy is not as good as the numbers would have us believe. For example, housing costs are slipping out of reach for the middle class in smaller and medium-sized cities across the U.S., the latest sign that the affordability crisis that started on the coasts is moving inland, according to research released on Friday by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
The lowest unemployment rate in 50 years still isn’t leading to big increases in wages and benefits for American workers. The closely followed employment cost index rose 0.7% in the fourth quarter, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday. That matched the MarketWatch forecast.
3hree: National brands are not meeting consumer expectations while private label products are.
4our: Consumers like saving money. It gives them a sense of empowerment.
Every increase in private label sales is an indication that consumers are dissatisfied with national brands. Most brands are lost when it comes to a marketing strategy on how to regain market share. More advertising is not the answer and becoming more active on social media is not the solution either.
The reality is that too many marketers are overloaded with data and fail to understand how to prioritize actionable insights. The other problem is that the talent pool of marketing executives has become polluted.
Marketers need to be held accountable. When they spend over five million dollars for a Super Bowl commercial executives need to ask “what did it do for sales?”. They also need to get back to basics and stop measuring things that don’t lead to actionable insights.
