Competition between Private Label and National Brand for Health-differentiated Food Product: A Canadian Retailing Case

Retailers in Canada are beginning to introduce private labels to gain vertical bargaining power over manufacturers and horizontal differentiation among retailers. Product differentiation in health and wellness is an emerging trend for both private labels and national brands. This study applies a model derived from a random utility nested logit model to estimate the extent to which consumer choice of health-related food attributes has affected retailer pricing and brand-level competition, using the Distance-Matrix (DM) approach to identify the location of both private label and national brands of canned soup market in their attribute space. It suggests that private label does not have a positive effect on retailers’ demand.