Do Retailers Manipulate Prices to Favour Private Label over Brands?

Chakraborty, Ratula (2018) Do Retailers Manipulate Prices to Favour Private Label over Brands?

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Abstract

Retailers act as both customers and competitors for brand manufacturers when selling private label in direct competition with brands. This paper considers whether retailers exploit this double-agent position to practice switch marketing, manipulating elements of the retail marketing mix to encourage shoppers to switch from buying brands to private label. Such manipulation can be blatant in nature, such as comparative advertising, brand delisting trials, copycat packaging, and biased shelf allocation. However, the key interest in this paper concerns whether retailers use a more subtle means through strategic pricing to favour private label over brands. The paper reveals very different price treatments of brands and matching private label goods. However, the identified pricing patterns are more indicative of retailers manipulating prices for the sake of segmenting consumers rather than displacing brands.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: brand,private label,retailer,pricing,marketing,manipulation
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > Norwich Business School
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Marketing
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Competition Policy
Related URLs:
Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 19 Mar 2018 11:30
Last Modified: 24 May 2023 05:38
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/66531
DOI:

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