“Unless I See, I Do not Buy”: Display Share Impact on Private Label Online Sales

The work herein deals with the impact of display share as a driver for private label sales in the online grocery retail setting. Starting from the assumption, well established in literature on “bricks-and-mortar” grocery stores, that an increase in the assortment share drives to higher sales share, empirical analysis is provided to verify if the same effect applies for the online channel as well. Cross-sectional analysis based on secondary scanner data provided by Circana in Italy on 190 food and beverage categories confirms the existence of a direct and robust relationship between private label online assortment and its sales share. Additionally, this relationship is found to be positively influenced by the category assortment depth, a moderating factor that does not hold significance in the offline channel.