Private labels and national brands across online and offline channels

Purpose - The aim is to present a novel, empirical analysis of the competitive battle between retailer-owned private labels (also known as store brands) and national brands (manufacturer-owned) in the online retail market. Design/methodology/approach - The authors investigate competition between private labels (PL) and national brands (NB) across online and offline retail channels using data supplied by a multichannel supermarket chain describing a full year's purchase records for 2,742 households in 36 product categories. They analyse competition between these two types of brands by estimating the following competition indicators: market share, loyalty and conquesting power (a measure of the ability of a brand to attract new customers). Findings - The results indicate that, whereas both PL and NB increase their loyalty online (versus offline), only the PL increases market share and conquesting power online. Several specific category-level effects are also found. Research limitations/implications - The analysis is restricted to a specific retailer and to grocery products. Practical implications - Given the general improvement found for the PL in the online retail channel, together with the growing importance of online retailing, manufacturers should expect increasing retailer bargaining power. Since this improvement is not equal across categories, however, some manufacturers will have harder times than others. Originality/value - To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first empirical paper to examine competition between PL and NB in the online channel. The database used is also highly unique in the sense that it is very unusual to obtain real purchase data for the same set of purchasers in both the offline and online retail channels.