Private-label products grow
The share of private-label products reached historic highs in the first two months of 2023, with consumers looking for cheaper solutions due to inflation, while their participation in the Household Basket measure has been considerable.
However, the shift toward private-label products is expected to continue at least throughout the year, especially since seven out of 10 suppliers and retailers are planning a new round of price hikes this year.
The latter was revealed on Thursday by the head of NielsenIQ for Greece and Bulgaria, Vaios Dimoragas, presenting the company’s annual conference on purchasing trends recorded in a survey carried out among CEOs of suppliers and retailers. It is no coincidence that the turnover growth expected for 2023 by the heads of supermarket chains and consumer goods industries will be inflationary, while half of them expect a decrease in sales volume this year of even more than 5%. In the first quarter of 2023, however, the reduction in sales volume is, according to a leading actor in the supermarket market, of the order of 4-5%.
So, according to data presented on Thursday by Alexandros Floros, the company’s retail vertical leader for Greece and Bulgaria, one in four products that consumers in Greece now buy from supermarkets are private label. While 2022 ended with the share of these products standing at 23.8% (including sales by Lidl, which is the main discount chain in the Greek market), in the first two months of 2023 the market share of private label products exceeded 25%.
Even without including Lidl’s sales, the share of private-label products is high – already more than one percentage point higher compared to what it was in 2022: In January and February 2023 it reached 16.2%, from 14.8% last year and 13.4% in 2021.
Private-label products are taking up more and more space in the online Basket as well. According to data presented by Convert Group’s founder and President Panagiotis Gezerlis, in the first quarter of 2023 the share of private-label products (by value) in the sales of electronic supermarkets was 15.2%, increased by 1.5 percentage points from 2022.
