Consumers Can Save 30 Percent Purchasing Store Brands

New consumer research by the Private Label Manufacturers Association reveals that shoppers can save about 30 percent off their grocery bill by purchasing store-brand products on their weekly trips to the supermarket.

“Prices may vary from market to market, but the savings that consumers will achieve will follow the same pattern across the country,” said PLMA president Brian Sharoff.

According to the research, on a typical trip to a supermarket to buy 43 basic grocery and household items, consumers saved an average of $46.39, or more than 30 percent, when compared with purchases of national brands in the same categories.

The products represented in the typical market basket included cereal, soda, pasta, orange juice and cookies, on the food side, and facial and bathroom tissue, cold and flu medications, dog food, and aspirin among the nonfoods. The top five products in the study found to have the largest gaps in pricing by percentage were aspirin, sinus spray, soda, saltine crackers and body lotion.

The price differential in soda, aspirin, sinus spray and lotion saved consumers between 50 percent and 60 percent, while for items such as cereal and ice cream, consumers saw savings of over 30 percent. Store-brand frozen pizza had a price differential of 23 percent. Dog food saved shoppers 25 percent over competing brands. In total, 35 of the 43 food and nonfood items PLMA examined saved consumers more than 20 percent off their grocery bills, and nearly a quarter of the products saved shoppers over 40 percent, according to the study.

PLMA's eight-week price comparison research was conducted in a typical suburban supermarket located in the northeast. A market basket featuring 43 frequently purchased products from both food and nonfood categories was used. A leading national brand product was compared with a similar store-brand product in each category, and prices were adjusted to account for all known discounts, coupons and promotions available for each of the weeks included in the study.

New York-based PLMA represents over 3,000 companies that are involved in the manufacture and distribution of store brand products.
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