America's Favorite Brands

 
 
 
 
 Americans have an ongoing love affair with brands. Threaten to take away their Dawn dishwashing detergent or their Kleenex and you'd better be ready for a knock-down, drag-out fight: Those items, along with Bounty paper towels and Crest toothpaste, are among the products shoppers choose most often when they roll their carts up and down the supermarket aisles.

While there are undeniable brand favorites in some categories, it's not as straightforward to pick a winner in others. A nearly equal percentage of shoppers claim to purchase Kellogg's and Cheerios (made by General Mills) when asked about their breakfast cereal preference. And there's no clear frontrunner in the “bottled water” or “dinner entrees” categories, either.

Then there are product categories like ice cream/frozen yogurt, paper towels and vegetables where a lesser-known – though formidable competitor – has managed to elbow its way into the No. 2 spot: the store brand.

These results are from a study compiled exclusively for STORES by BIGresearch and based on data from the Consumer Intentions and Actions survey, spanning the previous 12 months. Shoppers were asked to write in the brand name of the product they purchased most often in a series of consumer product goods categories. The findings, though not groundbreaking, provide plenty of talking points for those in the supermarket arena who are currently immersed in assortment optimization. Retailers believe this strategy will enable them to reduce the number of SKUs on the shelf while doing a better job of tailoring the mix to the shopper.

Simplifying consumers' choices
Last month, Wal-Mart cut the Glad and Hefty brands from its food storage shelves, retaining only one brand, Ziploc. Industry observers expect similar decisions to play out across other categories as the Bentonville giant accelerates its efforts to simplify brand assortment and shine a white-hot spotlight on its Great Value private brand.

Comparable efforts aimed at optimizing assortments are in the works at numerous supermarket chains. SUPERVALU CEO Craig Herkert recently told analysts that the company plans to edit the selection in some categories by as much as 25 percent. The focus is on reducing package sizes rather than entire brands or lines of product, yet in the categories that have already been “optimized,” some brands have been eliminated completely. Herkert says SUPERVALU's goal is to “increase holding power for our best-selling items and add space for SUPERVALU's owned brands.”

Industry watchers are convinced that Kroger is also in the middle of an aggressive SKU-optimization process. Though Kroger executives decline to provide specifics, it is widely known that the chain eliminated 30 percent of the SKUs in the breakfast cereal category about 18 months ago. Execs have been largely pleased with results; only one item originally cut from the mix was reinstated.

Kroger merchants have been working closely with dunnhumby, a London-based company that specializes in data management, for some time now. Armed with more precise buying data mined from loyalty cards and market basket analysis, they could pare more SKUs in the months ahead.

CVS Caremark has jumped into the SKU-reduction fray as well. At the start of the year the chain began pulling Energizer batteries from the shelves in a bid to simplify choices for consumers.