Dr. John Stanton, Ph.D., a food marketing professor at St. Joseph’s University’s Haub School of Business, was a featured expert in a Times-Tribune article about the increase in private-label sales in grocery stores. Private label grocery products were formerly known as generic products, and they are items produced by a grocery store chain to be sold in their stores. Such private label products are often cheaper than the same item produced by a national brand.
Private label generic brand sales increased 18.5 percent during a twelve month period ending in August 2013, compared to the same value from 2009. National-brand sales grew only 8 percent during the same period.
John Stanton explained the increase in private label grocery brand sales to the Times-Tribune: “A lot of people during the recession reluctantly bought private label, got home and said, ‘This is not bad at all. Why am I paying more money?’ Consumers aren’t demanding the best. They are demanding good.”
The article observes that a few other factors may have attributed to the change in customer preferences. First, it speculates that consumers who developed more frugal spending habits as a result of the recession may have kept them in better economic times. Labor Department statistics also show that food prices have risen faster than wages, potentially leading people to try to counteract the rising prices by buying cheaper brands. Finally, retail representatives assert in the article that the quality of private label grocery store brands has vastly increased over the past few years.