Over the past couple of weeks there have been several stories in the business news about large retailers and in particular Wal-Mart bumping brands off the shelf and replacing the national brands with a cheaper store brand.
For example, Wal-Mart recently removed Glad and Hefty storage bags on the shelf (Zip-Loc remains) and put their own lower-priced Great Value brand on the shelf. Ooops it now appears that Hefty will be returning because their parent company Pactiv Corp will be making the Wal-Mart product Great Value also.
As a long-time packaged good marketing communicator I hope that this trend does not continue. Clearly there are some categories where line extensions have become rampant and make it a harder choice at the shelf. For example do you really need 20 different types of toothpaste to choose from?
However, the innovation for products comes from the packaged good manufacturers and we need their leadership or the product innovation funnel will become empty.
So I hope this trend by Wal-Mart does not continue. I'm all for having choice of multiple brands and not two per category as Wal-Mart is trying in some areas.
What do you think?
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