Private Label vs Leading National Brand in the Online Grocery Retail Setting

The present work investigates the topic of inter-brand competition among Private Labels and Leading National Brands in the new online grocery retail setting. An analysis of peer-to-peer ratings and reviews regarding the two competing brand types has been developed. Findings highlights that: (i) the gen- eral online sentiment towards National Brand is significantly more positive than that towards Private Label; (ii) qualitative content analysis on reviews related to strongly positive/strongly negative ratings reveals that e-shoppers’ comments on National Brand focus more on non-price attributes (i.e. product quality and ser- vices), while 64% of overall comments on Private Label are price-related. This confirm the conjecture, already proved in the offline grocery retail setting, that store branded products are currently found to be in a weak competitive position compared to Leading National Brand in the emerging online retail setting too.