Private Label Strategy: How to Meet the Store Brand Challenge

Nirmalya Kumar · Jan-benedict E. m. Steenkamp

Feb 2007 · Harvard Business Review Press

About this ebook

As retailers have become more powerful and global, they have increasingly focused on their own brands at the expense of manufacturer brands. Rather than simply selling on price, retailers have transformed private labels into brands. Consequently, manufacturers such as Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, and Procter & Gamble now compete with their largest customers: major retail chains like Carrefour, CVS, Tesco, and Wal-Mart. The growth in private labels has huge implications for managers on both sides. Yet, brand manufacturers still cling to their outdated assumptions about private labels. In Private Label Strategy: How to Meet the Store Brand Challenge, Nirmalya Kumar and Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp describe the new strategies for private labels that retailers are using, and challenge brand manufacturers to develop an effective response. Most important, they lay out actionable strategies for competing against - or collaborating with - private label purveyors. Packed with detailed international case studies, valuable visuals, and hands-on tools, Private Label Strategy enables managers to navigate profitably in this radically altered landscape.

About the author

Nirmalya Kumar is Professor of Marketing at London Business School where he is also Faculty Director for Executive Education, Director of the Centre for Marketing, and Codirector of Aditya Birla India Centre. He serves as an independent director on the boards of ACC, BP Ergo, Gujarat Ambuja, and Zensar Technologies. Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp is the C. Knox Massey Professor of Marketing and Marketing Area Chair, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Executive Director of AiMark, a global research center.