Executive Summary:
Private labels is a topic of growing importance to retailers, who own the store brands, to national brand manufacturers, who compete with the store brands, and to researchers, who address problems in the context of national brand vs. store brand competition. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to bridge the gap between the needs of the practitioners and the offerings of the researchers through a critical, integrative review of the academic literature. It has two specific objectives: (i) To better communicate the current body of knowledge to practitioners and academics, and (ii) to identify meaningful directions for future academic research.
The specific focus is on profitable private label marketing strategies. What conditions are conducive for store brand introduction? What segments of the market should the private labels target? How should they be positioned, priced, and promoted? We address these questions through a review of 112 academic studies published or written during 1965-2002. These studies yield 16 results on various aspects of store brand marketing. We discuss the implications of these findings and provide a possible agenda for future research.
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