Skip navigation

BRANDS SEEN WISING UP TO REGIONAL CHALLENGE

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- National-brand marketers are wising up to the challenge posed by regional store brands.What's more, some of them are listening more carefully to retail customers and consumers, and will craft their own strategies to become more effective marketers in the store, said retail consultant Sidney Doolittle. He spoke to private-label manufacturers and others at the Private Label Manufacturers

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- National-brand marketers are wising up to the challenge posed by regional store brands.

What's more, some of them are listening more carefully to retail customers and consumers, and will craft their own strategies to become more effective marketers in the store, said retail consultant Sidney Doolittle. He spoke to private-label manufacturers and others at the Private Label Manufacturers Association Leadership Conference here in mid-March.

Doolittle, founding partner of the retail consulting firm McMillan/Doolittle, named these actions as likely to fuel national-brand strategies in the 1990s:

· Comarketing with other brands and with retailers.

· Responding more quickly to demographic trends.

· Refocusing on retail customers, segment by segment.

· Simplifying deal structures.

· Reducing the price spread between their products and store brands, and even getting more involved in private-label manufacturing.

"I am here to tell you, the cat-and-mouse game is almost over. National-brand owners are getting smarter. They understand private label is growing," said Doolittle, whose Chicago-based firm travels the country looking at supermarkets, talking to consumers and noting pricing and merchandising trends.

He dismissed recent well-publicized attempts by the national-brand community to declare the private-label movement as dead in the water, saying that, "nobody believes the research they are publishing."

Some packaged goods suppliers still believe "national brands will always return with a roar as recession ends; that form of denial is still prevalent. But a lot of them don't believe it, and instead see a change in consumers -- that they don't want to be told what to buy anymore."

Doolittle's research tells him that consumers increasingly want to make their own minds up about what to buy.