Buying of Private Labels Across Categories: How Far Is too far?

Abstract

This paper examines consumers’ behavior towards UK private labels (PL) across four categories: soft drinks, chocolate, banking and fuel. The results show that cross-category PL purchasing is stronger between related categories and PLs from the same tiers. However, the relationship is weak to non-existent for unrelated categories (chocolate and banking). These findings provide implications for retailers regarding the stretch ability of PL brand’s strategy across categories and across different PL quality tiers. The findings also provide insights into the potential to cross sell PLs in unrelated categories to current PL buyers.