Private-label goods see major price increases
Supermarkets’ own-brand products – also known as private-label goods – have seen price hikes of up to 25 percent in Greece over the last couple of years, while extensive offers by big brands bring their prices ever lower.
As a result of that the gap between the prices of private-label and big-brand goods is shrinking, and the former’s market share, which soared at the start of the crisis, is now getting smaller, with the exception of discount stores such as Lidl.
That development is attributed to the fierce competition among retailers over the last few years in their efforts to gain the biggest possible share of a constantly diminishing pie. Retailers invested in advertising and special offers for own-brand products, but, as profit margins were suppressed, they rolled the spending costs over to customers.
Although the European Union is experiencing a general decline in the market share of private-label goods, in Greece that drop has been faster, with own-brand products losing half a percentage point every year since 2013. An IRI survey showed that their share is in decline in all 12 main categories, ranging from 1.1 percentage point up to 10.4 percentage points in the period from 2014 to 2016.
