Young shoppers biggest private label fans: survey

KAREN COLLIER
August 3, 2018
Herald Sun
SHOPPERS feeling the cost-of-living squeeze are filling their fridges and pantries with supermarket home brand products.
Most grocery buyers now add private labels to trolleys every week, new research has found.
Milk, cheese, yoghurt, bread, pasta, rice, fruit, vegetables, meat and seafood are most popular.
Millennials are the most eager buyers (78 per cent), followed by gen X (71 per cent), according to an Australian Private Label Trends report from online research tool Glow.
Baby boomers are the least likely to regularly buy (60 per cent), it suggests.
Glow CEO Tim Clover said shoppers were increasingly looking for value for money.
Private label shoppers crave value for money, according to research.
“Consumers are driven to value for a number of reasons including household budgetary pressures, and whether they see enough benefit in a more expensive branded product,” Mr Clover said.
It appeared older shoppers had more loyalty to well-known brands that they had grown up with.
The report notes: “When shopping for private label products, each generation was driven by value with the price and quantity of the offering underpinning their decision”.
It also states: “While the duopoly of Coles and Woolworths continues to dominate the market, challengers like Aldi have led the retail giants to bolster their private label offerings in order to maintain margins and customer share”.
Most shoppers visit supermarkets two to three times a week, the research found.
Average weekly grocery spending ranged from $120 for the youngest shoppers, to $135 for baby boomers, and $140 for gen X.
Millennials were most impulsive, and more likely to make unplanned private label purchases than other generations.
While half of young shoppers believed home brand quality equalled name brands, only two in five baby boomers felt that was the case.
Older shoppers placed greater importance on ingredients, origin of production and nutritional information when choosing between private labels and name brand competitors.
The results were based on opinions from a national sample of 2000 shoppers answering an online survey.
Grocery goliath Coles recently divulged a goal of 40 per cent ‘own brand’ sales in its supermarkets within five years.
karen.collier@news.com.au