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Store brand and marketing strategies in the development of retailers and in the relations among
industries
Abstract
This work is part of a large research on the role of the store brand as a driver for the development
of mass retailers in food and no food sectors. In particular, this paper proposes an analysis of the
actual reality of the store brand, considering the difficulties in national and international markets
and the fast development of different formats and concepts of retailers and store brand concepts
in competitive enviroments. This work analyzes the principal core competencies of marketing
which improve the possibilities of differentiation and new possible relationships between retail
companies and industrial firms.
Keywords: Store brand, private label, relations between industry and retailer
Introduction
Since they appeared on the market, store brands have seen a strong development and spread,
obtaining more and more space both in the space allocation of market operators and in the faith
of customers. Nevertheless, private brands still shows great potentialities for the operators, and
this requires a deeper reflection on the strategic size of the phenomenon and the evolution of
purchase and consume. This re-define relations with the productive system – vertical dimension –
and the competent differentiation among retailers - horizontal dimension. This frame requires a
stronger awareness about the store brand as a coordinate action with high strategic value, and not
as mere tactic tool.
With the strong internationalization of distribution and the increasing of marketing culture for
retailers, the potential value generated by the strong identity connotation shows its effects on
categories, format of retailers, through a capacity/competence of structure, creation system.
Above all, it re-positions the surplus value achieved by improving contractual relations and the
confidence of final customers.
These issues determine the necessity for retailers of investing systematically in a set of internal
competencies that – after a long period of competition driver aimed at improving prices and
increasing sales proceeds of industrial firms – could define an autonomous path for the increasing
and distribution of surplus value (inter-dependent phenomena). This path is based on retailers’
marketing competencies and on a clear shared strategy of horizontal differentiation, according to
the issue that development and increasing of retailers – in a moment of stagnation of consumes,
deflation of prices and compression of economic boundaries – will work out thanks to the
confidence of final customers, to the detriment of other retailers existing on the market.
1. Research on the issue of store brand
Studies on the store brand [
1
] can be classified in five main groups, whose themes and
perspectives changed following the evolution of store brands and branding systems actuated by
retailers in the time.
The first area of studies focused on the analysis of customers towards the store brand. The first
contributes concerning purchasing behaviors about store brands are those of Myers in 1967,