by arguing that the environment in which you purchase the
jeans – ‘the last nine yards of cable’ was its phrase – is an impor-
tant part of the product and its image and should not be left in
the hands of the discounting supermarket. One has to suspect
both sides’ motives. We are looking neither at the consumer’s
champion nor at the upholder of sacred brand values; rather
this is a fight for the dominance of product or retail brands. At
present, some aspects of the law stand behind the product
brand in this kind of dispute, but much of the press is increas-
ingly aligned behind the retailer. Of course, this particular battle
has only just begun.
The death of proprietary brands?
Does the rise and rise of the retail brand imply the decline and
fall of the proprietary brand? Probably not, provided that the
suppliers recognise the challenge and evolve their brands
accordingly. It shouldn’t be supposed that the retailers have it
all their own way. Their customers have certain expectations of
what they will find in store, particularly with regard to certain
brand names – their favourites, the big names, the recently
promoted – and if they are disappointed, then they may just
change the store they shop in. In this regard, a supermarket
with no Coca-Cola is rather like a pub with no beer.
Consumer brands still have a power over retailers, but only if
they continue to behave as consumer brands – understanding
the needs of their target customers, coming up with the goods,
and investing in communicating that achievement.
There are signs that many are not sure of how to proceed along
this path, as if stunned by the changes they have witnessed. When
Tesco decided that it would sell its hugely valuable EPOS data to
its suppliers, many of those suppliers were at a loss as to what to
do with those data. Having once been the consumer expert,
building successful brands based on a genuine match between
their capabilities as manufacturers and the consumer’s needs as
uncovered by their research, it is as if a decade of category
management has left them witless. Category management has
The rise and rise of the retail brand
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