Private Label Strategy: How to Meet the Store Brand Challenge - Hardcover

As retailers have become more powerful and global, they have increasingly focused on their own brands at the expense of manufacturer brands. Rather than simply selling on price, retailers have transformed private labels into brands. Consequently, manufacturers such as Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, and Procter & Gamble now compete with their largest customers: major retail chains like Carrefour, CVS, Tesco, and Wal-Mart.

The growth in private labels has huge implications for managers on both sides. Yet, brand manufacturers still cling to their outdated assumptions about private labels.

In Private Labels: Competing With and Against Store Brands, Nirmalya Kumar and Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp describe the new strategies for private labels that retailers are using, and challenge brand manufacturers to develop an effective response. Most important, they lay out actionable strategies for competing against-or collaborating with-private label purveyors.

Packed with detailed international case studies, valuable visuals, and hands-on tools, Private Labels enables managers to navigate profitably in this radically altered landscape.

Move over Chips Ahoy; there’s a new President’s Choice in town. The old days of packaging generic brands in plain white wrapper and black lettering are long gone. As retailers have grabbed power around the globe, they’ve transformed private labels from price purchases into powerful brands with their own cachet. As a result, once-powerful brand manufacturers like Nestle and Proctor & Gamble now find themselves competing for shelf space with their biggest customers, like Tesco and Wal Mart.

With retailers and private labels continuing to gobble up valuable market share, you might think that brand manufacturers are already implementing competitive strategies. But instead they are still creating strategies based on outdated myths and assumptions about private labels. A different approach is now essential if brand manufacturing wants to stay in the game.

In Private Label Strategy authors Nirmalya Kumar and Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp debunk the long-standing myths about private labels, describe the new multilayered strategies that retailers are using for private labels, and change brand manufacturers to develop and effective response. But these esteemed authors don’t just tell a story and offer a challenge. They help you meet this challenge head on!

Based on international case studies and an unprecedented survey of customer insights, Private Label Strategy offers actionable strategies that you can develop today. The authors provide the tools you’ll need to compete against—or collaborate with—private label purveyors, and explain why you must consider private labels when telling your brand’s story.

Private Label Strategy is the first book to deal with a radically altered landscape where brand manufacturers compete directly with their retail customers. Some people say, “Brands are dead.” Now is the time to prove them wrong.