Private label price comparison: Track prices of alternatives to your products

Why consumers buy white label products  

White label products or distributor brands significantly impact consumers’ behaviour for various reasons: 

• Price sensitivity: 63% of consumers choose private label products1 because they are cheaper. As inflation increases, price sensitivity increases and consumers want to spend less on their shopping. They swap traditional brands for more cost-effective alternatives or substitute products.  
• Perception of quality: Although white-label goods used to be seen as inferior quality, now consumers say that the quality of these products has significantly improved. That’s why 96% of consumers buy private label products 1. 
• Wider variety of white label products: The range of store brands products increases as consumers look for cheaper alternatives. 82% of consumers already choose white label fashion, and 69% choose white label electronics products.   
• The store’s brand value: High-quality retailer products have become an important driver in increasing customers’ loyalty. Retailers that develop their own brands can convert customers looking for a cheaper alternative in the short term into loyal customers in the long term.    

• Competition between brands: White label products make sense because national or manufacturer brands exist. They offer a more cost-effective alternative to more well-known products. White label products need manufacturer brands to survive so that the consumer can compare them and choose the best option at any given moment. The most effective strategy for any retailer is to offer a mix of brands.  

  1: Salsify - 2023 Shopper Research

If you manufacture a brand and need to know your market positioning and competitiveness, you can do so by comparing your brand’s prices, characteristics, and ratings against white label products. Minderest’s Competitive Environment tool can help you compare product by product.

Pricing of private label vs national brands 

White label products are emerging as a cheaper alternative to more well-known brands. Apart from the RRP, customer perception is the most significant determining factor when choosing between a national brand and a private-label product.  

• If there is a significant difference between the price of a product and its alternative, consumers tend to choose the cheaper product, particularly if they think that both products are very similar. This happens due to the price anchoring bias. 
• On the other hand, if the price difference is negligible, the consumer will likely choose the manufacturer’s brand product because they think it has better characteristics or guarantees.  

Most of the time, the manufacturer has no say in the final price of a product, although they can use various strategies to improve consumers’ value perception, for example: 

• Higher volume, lower price: For example, as with drinks, offering a lower price per litre the greater the quantity of the product, or buying a non-separable pack.  
• Free gifts with every purchase: Include merchandising as a free gift or to add value to the product. 
• Special after-sales promotions: For example, including codes in packaging so that consumers can collect points which can be exchanged for exclusive gifts. 
• RRP on the label: This practice tends to stop the distributor from changing the price of a product.  

Any strategy that increases the end consumer’s perceived value of a product needs in-depth analysis beforehand. This analysis provides the key to identifying your competitive positioning for these private label products with different retailers. You can analyze the current price, average price, and how it changes over time, as well as the ratings and customer reviews for alternative products.  

Our Competitive Environment tool can carry out this analysis by monitoring the prices of white label products as it has: 

• The most advanced matching algorithm on the market, with artificial intelligence, and the ability to match identical, similar, or white label products.
• High-quality data: Accurate, comprehensive, consistent, reliable and up-to-date.
• A fully customizable dashboard for constant analysis. 

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