Household store brand proneness: A framework

Store brands play an important role in retail grocery strategy. Yet, little recent research has examined factors thought to influence the selection of store brands. This paper augments prior research by building an integrated framework within which to view private brand proneness. Factors found to influence store brand proneness included familiarity with store brands, the extent to which consumers rely on extrinsic cues such as price and packaging to judge product quality, intolerance for ambiguity, perceived quality variation between national and store brand products, perceived risk, perceived value for money, income and family size. The results suggest that consumers' negative perceptions of store brands are driven primarily by the poor quality image of these products. Implications for marketing strategy are presented.