Is it worth copying the leader? The impact of copycat packaging strategies on private label's adoption

Private Labels have been gaining increasing importance throughout the world (Kumar and Steenkamp 2007) with store brands being present on almost every product category (Geyskens, Gielens, and Gijsbrechts, 2010). Private labels (PL) are estimated to account for one of every five items sold every day in USA (Ailawadi, Pauwels, and Steenkamp, 2008), representing about 20% of the average purchases made worldwide (Lamey et al., 2007). Moreover, nowadays we are assisting to a proliferation of segmentation strategies at the level of private labels (Kumar and Steenkamp, 2007), indicating that retailers are not just competing on price, but instead are trying to conquer a significant market share traditionally owned by manufacturers. From an initial focus on price, private labels have moved to a quality positioning, and more recently, to a status orientation positioning, extracting benefits from the retailers’ own-brand image (Steenkamp, Heerde, and Geyskens, 2009).