PRIVATE LABELS PUSHED AS SOLUTIONS

BARBARA MURRAY

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- The way most retailers advertise their private-label products is along generic lines, such as, "'Think of Piggly Wiggly brand when you want quality and savings,' rather than doing an ad for bleach, which is the top-selling private-label household product," said Newbern Rooks, director of private brands for Piggly Wiggly Co. here.

Piggly Wiggly has 15 items and 35 stockkeeping units in household cleaners under its own brand, Rooks said. The Sewell-Allen group of 10 Piggly Wiggly stores in Memphis is considering doing a "Spring Cleaning" ad that would round up many of the items and present them together as a cleaning solution, added Lori Guyton, spokeswoman for Piggly Wiggly.

"It's an elevation of the private label to a national brand," Guyton added. "You're not in any way compromising your standards in buying that. It's a choice, the same as a brand choice."

Safeway, based in Pleasanton, Calif., in a circular prominently promoted its Safeway Select brand of Ultra II laundry detergent, along with two nationally branded household products and store-brand paper napkins and aluminum foil. Saying the topic was "too strategic," a Safeway spokeswoman declined to comment.

Bill Bishop, president of Willard Bishop Consulting, Barrington, Ill., said that in private label, "helping the consumers become aware that they have that private-label option is probably the No. 1 goal." Ads in the store circular that mix the store's own brand with a national brand, as Safeway did in its December ad, which ran in the Denver area, help attract attention to the private label.

"Shoppers are divided into three groups," Bishop noted. There are those who are loyal to private label and accept its benefits, and, for them, it's their brand. Another group is quite skeptical, and some in that group do not even know that the private label exists. "There is a tremendous opportunity to build awareness and trial with that group, so they may discover it's just as good," Bishop said.

The third group switches, and tends to be more price-oriented, buying whatever's cheaper. "Putting these things into a solutions framework really does help simplify the consumer's thought process," said Bishop. "These are all contemporary values that supermarkets are working hard to learn how to satisfy.

"Historically, supermarkets present the best prices on the top of the ad, especially when a retailer is more interested in selling more," he added.

"We are all struggling with 'what do we mean by solution selling?' It's one of those things that's easy to say but hard to do."