It's often cheaper to buy private label or "home brand" groceries. But they're also often more profitable for the supermarkets.
  • MonsterMonster@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    26 minutes ago

    Here in the UK the perception of the value of own-label products is mixed where some are cheap but rubbish quality (Waitrose Essential Bagels) and others that are as good quality as the big brands (Tesco Bagel v American Bagel Co.) but way cheaper.

    However, there does seem to be something happening where good value own-label products are disappearing through more shelf space being given to big brands and displacing own-label equivalents.

    I use sensitive toothpaste and I usually buy the stuff several tubes at once. The big brand is Sensodyne which is good but at £5.75/75ml (Tesco) is expensive. The Tesco brand which was as good was way cheaper at around £1 making it far better value for money.

    But here’s the issue, the big brands can’t compete with the quality and value of own-label products on pricing. Across three of the largest supermarkets (Aldi, Lidl, Tesco) the own-label sensitive toothpaste has disappeared with more shelf space being allocated to Sensodyne. All recently at the same time.

  • oce 🐆@jlai.luEnglish
    7·
    4 hours ago

    Some supermarket brands are made by the same factories as the original ones, the difference is mostly marketing.

    By the way, this is similar to Amazon analyzing the most profitable products from their partner merchants and creating their own “basic” version to take the market. But people don’t seem as scandalized when supermarket do it.

    • IsThisAnAI@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      10 minutes ago

      Because once you get off Lemmy/Reddit the world is just fine with white labeling.

      If a company takes it’s time to build a brand I can trust the product I am perfectly happy paying a little extra. Wegmans does this heavily but in their boxes they have clear and consistent gf labeling. I’m happy to pay a bit extra.

    • Obi@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      4·
      2 hours ago

      I’m guessing you’re French based on your instance. I had a friend many moons ago that worked at a processing plant where they packaged the William Saurin stuff (cassoulet, etc). At some point during the batch process once they reached the quota for the branded batch, they literally just switched the label roll to the Lidl ones and kept going with the exact same food.

      Of course there’s no way to really know which products are like this and which are made with nasty cheap ingredients.

    • Mr_Blott@feddit.ukEnglish
      2·
      4 hours ago

      It does sound odd, but I read it as “things used to be cheaper on the internet”.

      I’ve never bought groceries on the internet, but a good example is household products

      Compare the price of, for example, drain cleaner, coffee machine descaler, dish soap, sponges etc etc

      They’re far cheaper to buy in a supermarket than from Amazon or anywhere online now. Online retailers have been jacking up prices for a decade, whereas supermarkets have been trying to keep them down

  • jeffw@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    4 hours ago

    Is “home brand” an Australian term? I’ve never heard store brands or private labels called that