miromiro/Depositphotos.com
June 26, 2025
Is Brand Loyalty Becoming a Thing of the Past in Grocery?
Brand loyalty is a common concept in retail, particularly in the grocery business. In recent years, however, it appears that brand loyalty may be a concept with a limited shelf life — at least in terms of national brands hogging the spotlight through reputation and market saturation alone.
Setting the stage, a recent survey from Ernst & Young highlighted a declining trust in value-addition efforts by brands, with 35% of respondents saying branding had little influence on their purchase decisions. Instead, shoppers are increasingly drawn to private label products for their price, value, and quality. A 2025 survey of Canadian shoppers found that nearly half opted for store brands over national brands due to the value proposition, and 75% based purchases solely on price rather than loyalty.
New Survey of US Grocery Shoppers Examines Brand Loyalty in Depth
On June 26, a First Insight study titled “The Quiet Takeover of Private Label” indicated that the longstanding distinction between national brand products and private label offerings may be blurring.
First, the appeal of national brands’ built-in market recognition may be declining. About three-quarters (71%) of respondents indicated they could pick out a private label product when making a purchase, but an even greater cohort (72%) failed to do so when shown side-by-side images of national brand products and their private label equivalents.
The study also found that 84% of polled consumers believe private label products are just as good — if not better — than national brands in terms of quality. Over half (52%) of those surveyed said that they had been moved, in the past, to purchase a private label product by “in-store promotions, packaging, displays, or marketing materials.”
Other intriguing results from the survey included:
- There’s a new trend of spotting (and buying) the “dupe” product: Almost half (47%) of shoppers said they had bought a private label product specifically due to it being a dupe of a name-brand item. A full 44% — and a striking 70% of those who earn more than $150,000 per year — indicated they were more likely to buy a private label item if it is marketed as a dupe of a high-end product.
- The stigma of the store brand has faded: More than three-quarters (77%) of U.S. consumers no longer show concern with public perception of their purchase of private label goods. However, income level matters in this regard, with 44% of those making $150,000 per year or more stating they were concerned, versus just 17% of those earning $50,000 or less.
- Brand loyalty is in flux: More than half of those surveyed said they were either brand curious (32%) or primarily influenced by price and savings (20%), versus the 48% who identified as strictly brand loyal. Further, 71% said they would try a private label product if their preferred national brand was absent, and 45% indicated they’d permanently switched to a private label brand after trying an item that met or exceeded expectations.
Greg Petro, First Insight’s CEO, summed up his company’s study succinctly.
“Shoppers aren’t loyal to brand names the way they used to be. They’re loyal to price, quality and marketing. This creates a highly competitive arena where the best — yet not necessarily the most well known — brands will win,” Petro said.
“When a national brand stumbles, it opens up an opportunity for private labels to grow their market share — but only for those with products that feel intentional, well-designed and trustworthy. Consumers will let you know exactly which ones those are. You just have to ask them,” he added.
Discussion Questions
Is brand loyalty becoming a thing of the past in grocery, or is it simply evolving?
What can national brands do to stave off the significant growth and popularity of private label competitors? What obvious disadvantages in doing so do they face?
Which private label brands come most readily to mind when speaking of success stories in this regard?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Ian Scott
Director, Ian Scott Retail Consulting Ltd
Chuck Ehredt
CEO, Currency Alliance
Georganne Bender
Principal, KIZER & BENDER Speaking
Recent Discussions
More Discussions
How Can Retailers Crack the Gen Z ‘Riddle’?
Gen Z is becoming an increasingly important consumer demographic, but an elusive one to map. How…Does Bath & Body Works’ Scented Holiday Campaign Pass the Sniff Test?
Bath & Body Works is kicking off a new campaign with scent being at the fore…Which Tech Will Solve In-Store Inventory Woes?
Three major tech lineups are looking to solve retail inventory problems. Which is most suited?
In the US, brand loyalty has waned in grocery. This is partly because of inflation and consumers focusing more on price than before. However, it is also because most grocers have improved the quality of their private label offerings, effectively giving the consumer more scope and choice to shop around. The other point is the rise in smaller brands which have challenged the bigger players. Of course, loyalty is not dead entirely – there are still clear category leaders and most consumers have their go-to options.
Not only has brand loyalty been greatly reduced in Grocery, it’s being celebrated. Customers are excited to shop at the likes of Aldi and Trader Joes, seemingly wanting to escape the repetitive aisles of Cheerios and Coca-Cola that they see in every other grocery store.
What is loyalty to a brand (i.e. what, exactly, are you being “loyal” to?) One way, you simply like the attributes a product demonstrates: a soup …a brand of soups, may taste a certain way, a soap may have a certain feel, or smell; in short, you expect a certain experience, and will stay with the brand as long as it delivers it (reformulate at your peril!) But another way – perhaps more along the lines of what this topic is thinking – is identification with the brand itself: it’s authentic or it’s trendy or it’s “just like my grandma makes”…this latter attribute has declined as consumers have become more sophisticated. Sadly I don’t see it returning.
loy·al·ty a strong feeling of support or allegiance.
You’re right the consumer support (repetitive purchase, experience affinity) is a mix of:
Product, the Store purchased at (vs competitors), and the Corporate companies (owning the product and/or stores).
Any of the 3 can become a let down & increase the willingness to try options. Ingredients change, price increases, commerce site has a data breach. et al.
On top of that is lifestage & lifestyle changes.
Brand loyalty is not waning. What is changing is that we now understand all consumers — all — are brand polygamous as described in the excellent Ehrenberg-Bass work and the book How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp. Seems to me grocery also suffers from a badly decayed media environment where TV is now weak but neither TikTok nor any other other social option can replace what has been lost. What was lost? Meaning. Maintaining brand strength requires continual communication to help customers remember what is meaningful about a product — not transactional dashes for quick sales through retail media. Brand manufacturers need to return to powerful advertising based on meaningful advantages specific products offer customers. Without that, they cannot maintain their position in retail. I’ve fought this exact challenge on behalf of customers for 30 years. Excellent advertising like our Kobalt Tools work can deliver power. Too few brands will do that work. Now imagine if non-store brands did similar work…
Marketers want to do more branding… a lot more fun, creative than the transactional promos. But the corp/brand owners still deal with quarterly results or even hostile investors. Thus the branding became a rotational mix, within “performance” (CTA on that LTO instilling FOMO) campaign.
TV is just one avenue of audio/video content. Content can be put in alot of places. But consumer b.s. detectors are stronger & louder every year.
Brand ads (as a dream like aspiration) still have to convey a valued consumer response (emotion, find out more, perfect gift,). Product differentiation can be a stretch to validate with impact. Tougher as private labels proliferate.
No disagreements. Our work focused on leveraging product in order to also build brand. As a result, it both drove near term sales AND a long term brand value which transactional ads cannot develop. The loss of TV, though, is a serious problem. We used TV, for example, to build Drill Doctor and Kreg Too into significant brands which could not have succeeded without the opportunity to develop a more deeply comprehensive story. Not all products are Stanley Mugs able to be stimulated with TikTok.
In Media there have been many losses of “TV” … incl the rise & fall of cable and recorders. The work for decades has been the iterations of fragmentation.
Look for it only in history books, when the “original TV” could get a 70% share of audience. Ah to be in the business back then!… only a handful of advertisers in the whole country, but a media plan on 1 page of paper!
YT, TT or IG are reach without cohesion.
Are we loyal to retailers or to store layout? Want to drive a loyal customer crazy? Move product around on the sales floor.
Ok… back to the topic at hand. I am not as loyal as I used to be – I have too many choices. I visit my favorite grocer most of the time, but I hit another store for meats, and Walmart for family-sized, money-saving, shopping runs.
What we see online makes a difference, too. Name brand dupes are hot right now, and customers don’t mind shopping around to find them. Check out @lorafied on Instagram and TikTok. She shares dupe rich deals at all sorts of stores, Aldi, Costco and Walmart included.
I don’t think it’s loyalty that is waning or becoming a thing of the past. It’s differentiation. Or distinction. If the specific product attribute that the customer was loyal to has disappeared, or if a competitor has replicated that attribute at a cheaper price, is it really ‘disloyal’ of the customer to switch? How ‘loyal’ are they supposed to be? It’s a can beans or a box of cereal. I think of it as customer auto-pilot, or habit, or momentum that keeps some brands going longer than they really deserve. Customers start to experiment a little and discover they’ve been over-paying for way too long. No differentiation, no discernable difference worth paying for…???…then why would the customer stay?
It’s competition. Survival of the fittest. If a brand loses its edge relative to the competition, that’s not a customer loyalty problem. That’s a failure to compete problem. Brands and products that can’t compete with differentiated product, and can’t afford to compete on price, are inevitably going to lose market share.
Digital marketing plays a crucial role in shaping brand loyalty, as it allows brands to engage with consumers through personalized content and promotions. With the rise of social media and targeted advertising, brands can build relationships with consumers by understanding their preferences and providing tailored experiences. As a result, while traditional brand loyalty may be waning, digital marketing is facilitating a new form of loyalty driven by data-driven insights and online interactions.
Curious, how 1 to 1 a brand “builds relationships with you” that gives you what you want & not what you don’t.
“Personalization” sounds great (now trite in the ad pitching world).
BUT brands forget that true personalization aligns to the customer & kills reach… discovery still remains, but the reach drops! Customer wants what their interest & needs are… not what’s in the other 12 aisles of the store.
Many many times did I write to Vons/Safeway/Albertsons co… asking why their “JUST for you” rewards program was not “JUST” for me.
ie. their Personalization was a 100% failure. With 20 years of data of mine, they still served 100% irrelevant coupon categories (baby food, booze, outdoor furniture). Coupons for things I never even searched for, much less bought.
Their silent answer… to NOT change their digital practice, but merely dropping the “JUST” and keeping the “For U”
I would never believe the store if they marketed to me stating “providing tailored experiences”. [That would lose them reach of their irrelevant promos!]
The other category of “builds relationships with you” that is a marketing peeve… commerce sites you created an account with years ago & forgot. They randomly make a come back with daily promo emails… no contextual content, just promos. No cart being triggered. In fact, they’d been so quiet I’d forgotten them. But now they come on too strong (wanting money). Feels like a long ago neighbor showing up at your door for a loan… the ??? feeling.
Brand loyalty isn’t dying – it’s transferring from product manufacturers to retail curators. The question is whether national brands can adapt fast enough to compete in a world where quality is table stakes and price transparency is universal.
For decades, national brands served as quality proxies in an information-poor environment. Brand loyalty was actually risk mitigation. Private label has since reverse-engineered the brand value proposition on quality, risk reduction, information transparency, and economic rationality in an information-rich environment.
The winners will be those who understand that in a post-loyalty world, you earn customers one purchase at a time. Banking on emotional connections built decades ago is no longer a viable strategy.
“an information-poor environment”
Before digital reviews & fast mobile communication.
When the :30 product demo (the ketchup stain is now gone!) was the proof.
Comparing the brand ingredients … brand product label to private product label… and not needing to be in the store. Seems to natural & obvious.
But the info age started long ago… a spouse standing in the food market calling the other at home.. “will this do?” “This is cheaper”
I have always thought that brand loyalty is a misnomer. Very few customers blindly follow a brand through thick and thin. Sports fans are the only sector I can think of that have true loyalty.
Customers only continue shopping with you until you give them a reason to leave. That’s not loyalty, its familiarity and enjoyment. The moment a brand loses value, makes questionable decisions or stops innovating, customers will leave.
Grocery is at the sharp end of retail, it’s the only category we have to shop, otherwise we die. As a result, it’s a necessary evil, and therefore, rarely enjoyed. Which means shoppers have very little tolerance for friction or poor value.
Sports analogy is good.
How would “your team” feel if they knew you were visiting other teams in the driving radius. Just “shopping around” for another game to watch.
Supermarkets could never be that blind. Multiple markets, or multiple locations is not rare.
Sports is falling apart in many cases as well, serving as a good model for retail and grocery. I no longer follow the Oakland Raiders, the team of my youth, but follow specific players due larger to lack of loyalty from team to player and player to team – Taysom Hill rocks wherever he chooses to play. Same thing now happening in college sports where NIL and revenue sharing will slowly whittle away at what have been loyal fan bases, leaving only the most committed fans – Go Tarheels and Cougars!
It strikes me that many people remain loyal to their favorite grocery store, but tend to be shifting allegiance to different brands within the store. In fact, the grocery chains have done a very good job of differentiating the customer experience when inside their 4 walls (and often online too), but most now have such a comprehensive offering that consumers can find nearly any product across any of the grocers they visit. That suggests consumers have shifted their loyalty from the product brands to the service brands that deliver the shopping experience.
In general, I believe white label products for some grocers are on par with traditional brands, but this is not always the case. However, consumers seem interested to try alternatives and form their own opinions.
I’d say the largest chains have not “done a very good job of differentiating the customer experience” and that’s why Trader Joe’s, Aldi, etc exist (and thrive).
Once inside my Kroger (multiple name plates) or Albertsons (multiple name plates) I could not tell the difference. It’s ‘pick up a small cart; get out fast’.
I’m on the flipside of using, “such a comprehensive offering“.
Supermarket to me is for food. I do, however, understand people who have the NEED for 1 stop (see it with my elderly relatives).
Better yet, I do drug stores via digital… to stack coupons & layer on click thru cash back sites.
Interesting how brand loyalty is often seen as fading. It is not. It is just shifting.
Earlier, brands earned loyalty because they were the default choice. Now, buyers pause and think. Is this worth it? Is there a better option? In many cases, they are open to trying something new.
That does not mean brands have lost their place. But they need to show up differently. It is not about being the biggest name anymore. It is about being the most relevant choice at that moment.
What has also changed is how quickly smaller brands can build trust. No large launches, no big campaigns. Just a solid product, fair pricing, and clear intent.
The rules have changed. Quality and trust still matter. They are just harder to earn now.
Brand loyalty is assurance in the quality of the good. Different demographics skew heavy to private label vs. name brands. Value buyers who are economical, discerning buyers, understand product quality aspects will indeed try and buy more often. At the same time, what you feed your family is important so paying a premium for canned goods or frozen items that aren’t Campbell’s, Green Giant and so on is influenced by rising prices, thus causing shoppers to shift their basket penetration. Grocers love this shift especially when margins are favorable for private label. Brand advertising and point of purchase featuring, end of aisle displays and of course in-store retail media as well as influence online shopping behavior are keys. What is missing from the equation are grocery chains giving shoppers incremental benefit for buying leading brands vs. private label as part of their loyalty scheme.
Inflation has hurt name brands because more shoppers have moved to lower-priced private labels, which have improved their quality. As for grocery stores, Aldi has chipped way at the dominance of traditional supermarkets.
No doubt private label continues to grow. The better food retailers (Kroger, Wegmans, HEB, etc,) are using their own label as a way to create differential advantage. The old days of price-only are gone.
This leaves national brands with the challenge of innovating their products to give consumers a reason to buy.
Consumers do not need or aspire to become brand loyal. Products need to earn brand loyalty. How? By delivering on their unique promises. Brands can enjoy continuity of purchase if they deliver benefits unmatched by their competitors. My advice to brands & retailers looking for loyalty: get a dog!
Private label has been spelling the end of National branding for years. With the same requirements that National Branded products require, there are few discernable differences except for price, and when you remove the cost of national marketing, the savings become apparent.
To quote a speaker at last week’s CommerceNext conference, loyalty lasts until the consumer finds something better. I believe that has been the case forever and it’s now more evident as we have more choices than ever. 20 years ago my go-to chicken sandwich was Wendy’s. No longer.
Shoppers are loyal to themselves. They want what they want and that includes value for the dollars they spent.
In the past that meant spending for the reliable quality of a top brand.
The increase quality of private label items lets shoppers buy the product that does the best job for most reasonable price with minimal risk.
Something else to look at is price consistency. Branded products are typically on sale and off sale. Telling consumers not to buy off sale. Private label items are more often a good value every day.
Too much work on loyalty is based on expecting shoppers to be loyal rather than doing the work to earn shopper loyalty.
I have never been particularly brand loyal but certain products outperformed the competition enough (Tide, Bounty) that you stayed loyal. But then some brands like P&G got greedy post pandemic and destroyed that customer-brand relationship and loyalty. Their admitted strategy of “because we can” price hikes made me sample other brands and I found others, including Wegmans’ house brands, just as good and I never looked back. The greed post pandemic is likely the biggest factor that destroyed a lifetime of brand loyalty over one 5-10% price hike after another. When a jug of Tide that used to cost $14.99 now sells for $22.99, and a big club pack of Bounty runs north of $30 what did they think would happen?
The brands that are seeing the strongest growth combine unique positioning with niche product alignment. The perception that big brands owned by multinational corporations or private equity holdcos is largely moving negative, especially with inflation/shrinkflation.
Brands like Olipop, Liquid Death, Gruns, and Clean Simple Eats are able to succeed in the market due to their combination of strong (and unique) branding coupled with a differentiated product.
The more commoditized your product, the stronger your brand category affiliation needs to be.
I get paid over 220 Dollars per hour working from home with 2 kids at home. i never thought i’d be able to do it but my best friend earns over 15k a month doing this and she convinced me to try. it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do, check it out by Visiting Following Website
HERE—————⊃⫸ Www.Work44.Com