Retailers continue to play their trump card

For the 6th year, the trade paper Lebensmittelzeitung and IPSOS have carried out their „Private Label Monitor“ with an online survey of 1,000 adults in February 2020.

Private label (PL) is well established in Germany. 96% of consumers buy them and 66% have as much confidence in them as in branded goods. Other results of the survey show that consumers see range quality of PL to be just as good as brands with 13% even considering PL ranges to be better. „Value for money“ continues to be the prime consideration for choosing PL with 64% of consumers, compared to 66% in 2019 and 76% in 2018, ie declining. This year, 23% of consumers considered brands and PL to offer the same value for money.

Interestingly, consumers are not particularly aware of the names of retailers‘ PL products, with only 41% remembering these names. 32% stated the name of the PL product to be of no importance. The overall quality image of the specific retailer is of more interest, which will be good news for ALDI North and South who have recently unified their previously separate PL ranges.

There is also a growing awareness of PL packaging design, in particular amongst younger target markets (under 39 years).

Convenience food was also examined in the survey. Food to go continues to show growth. 60% of consumers have noted that in this area product ranges are increasing. Overall, PL in Grocery showed turnover in 2019 of €56.6bn, 2.6% less than 2018. Their market share shrank accordingly to 39.6% from 40.6% in 2018. These figures refer to Food and Near Food. Much of the decline was due to discounters concentrating more on newly listed branded products in their promotional strategy.