One of the reasons why private labels thrive is they have something better to offer. A product innovation or enhancement that the market has been waiting for from their brand of choice but has not seen the time of day. Private labels are afforded this opportunity—to come up with an improved and better version of a product in a relatively short time.
Enjoying consumer trust
According to 2019 Private Brand Intelligence Report conducted by Daymon, a private brand and innovation development company, 85% of those they surveyed trust private brands and 81% have said they have purchased private brands on their shopping trips. This just means that shoppers nowadays are more discerning and know what they want from their products.
Almost gone are the days when brands go head-to-head with their competition. While this proves productive for competing brands to innovate and improve their products, consumers are not totally convinced that Brand X is now better than Brand Y. They can readily search for the product online with their mobile gadgets and do their research and decide whether the product suits their lifestyle.
Competition brings innovation
In case you noticed, the proliferation of private labels has given the market a multitude of choices for a particular category. For example, pet food as a category already gives you the basic dog food and cat food. Under dog food, you have to consider dry or wet dog food. If you pick out dry dog food, these are further broken down to grain-free, human-grade, and so on.
National brands just cannot afford to compete with private labels’ capability to come up with a product that addresses a particular need of a particular market, especially if they cannot recoup their investment that goes into research and development, marketing and advertising, just to serve a small market segment. It would be very expensive for them to do so. This opportunity has been embraced by private labels with open arms.
Pet food innovation
In an online survey of 1,360 Americans conducted by Open Farm, 84 percent said that they pay as much attention to the ingredients in their pets’ food as in their own[¹] because they already have considered their pets as part of the family. Humanization of pets has given rise to product innovations on pet food with products that are inspired by human recipes, have all-natural ingredients, are grain-free or gluten-free, contain hypoallergenic ingredients, use free-range meats, are human-grade, and so on.
It is safe to say that there is a pet food out there that addresses a particular need of a pet owner, and most likely, that product is a private label pet food.
Find out how Addiction Food Private Label can help you come up with your own private label pet food. We might just prove to be the right partner for you.
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For further reading:
https://nutrifusion.com/private-label-innovation-connecting-millennials/
https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2019/04/11/Consumers-don-t-just-like-private-label-they-prefer-it
https://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2017/06/24/private-label-becomes-the-branded-product/
https://www.mytotalretail.com/article/private-brands-hand-in-innovation/
