Magazine: Private label products: changing strategies, growing market

According to the 2013 edition of Euromonitor’s Global Consumer Trends survey, 89 percent of consumers regularly put private label products in their basket. In the last 12 months 56 percent of them bought just as many PL products as earlier, 15 percent purchased more and 18 percent procured fewer. It seems that people between the ages of 30 and 44 are most open to this product category: their interest in PL products keeps growing, for instance last year 16 percent more of them bought private label products than in the previous one. While 15 years ago people were unimpressed with PL products, today their attitude is positive about them in almost every country. At the moment private labels are most popular in Western Europe and North America – in 2012 the US market was the biggest with USD 79.1 billion value, although the 13-percent penetration level was lower than in Western Europe. In Europe Switzerland has the most developed private label market as 38 percent of total FMCG sales are PL goods; however, translated into the language of sales this only represents USD 9.5 billion. Germany is the second biggest PL country in Europe both in terms of sales and penetration (which is at 30 percent). Euromonitor’s forecast is that the private label category will keep expanding in the next few years. Even more so because manufacturers have started paying increased attention to marketing aspects