Hacker News Reader

Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

It would be nice for sellers to be required to disclose that the product is their private label.

some are very obvious but it is similar when grocery shopping, it can be difficult to know who is making the product you buy.

View on HN

This would defeat the purpose of private labeling, which is to make you rely on the private label brand and not the manufacturer. The private label brands wants the freedom to change manufacturers and have you stick with them instead of going to the manufacturer.

And the manufacturer doesn't want you to know you can buy exactly the same potato chips in two different bags at two different price points

But why should we accept that?

Because even though the product might be from the same supplier, it is not a product of this brand. There is a big difference.

The customer-expectation of a brand-product is based on the perception, the history and the presence of that brand, a well-crafted association and experience that is funded with the profit of the product.

The private-label product is cutting this funding. It will not finance the supplier-brand and it sets its own expectation and quality-thresholds on the product. The supplier accepts that and waives his control to get the volume-order and fill production-gaps in its factory.

In this kind of deal there is no direct relationship between the original brand and the private-label product anymore.

Edit, for clarification: It's not said that the potato-chips will be exactly the same. The minimum requirements of the brands may not match with the minimum-requirements of the private-label, i.e. for the private-label a different grade of potato, oil, salt might be used.

The manufacture also reserves the right to package a lower quality product. I've bought generic cereal that I'm sure was Kelloggs, most of the time I couldn't tell the difference - every once in a while there was a slight burnt taste. Still food safe, but not as high quality.

Ok, but the whole concept of capitalism optimising resource use is based on availability of information, so it's surely essential for a properly functioning market?

Isn't it time we grew up as society, get forthright and stop trying to trick people into buying stuff by hiding information so sellers can bait-and-switch, cut quantities, cut ingredient value, etc..

Isn't it embarrassing? You sell great batteries at a good price, but only long enough to capture the market so you can push bad value on millions of people and cause excess damage to the environment .. so you can make a personal fortune. Straight theft seems almost moral compared to this.

I bought biscuits yesterday, same box, same price, 17% less biscuits. Just now the packaging is very wasteful, but they managed to use extra plastic to disguise the reduction of food content. Oh, and apparently as the small print on the back gives the contents this is all fine. Some manager got a bonus for that I imagine.

We're still living in the Stone Age, only instead of using rocks to cannibalise each other we use language, marketing, economics, and politics.

Cognitive Violence is a thing. It won't (usually) kill you as directly as a blow to the skull, but it's not exactly life enhancing either.

So the point is to deceive the customer and because that's the entire point is OK and needs to be tolerated?

No, deception has nothing to do with that. The point is to disconnect the product from its brand and connect it to another (in-house) brand instead, practically negotiating away the brand/marketing portion of the price by committing to an attractive purchase-volume.

If I'm Pepsi and you want to white-label my product but then again still want to tell everyone it's Pepsi, you still make your sales on the back of my brand-investment, so you'll have to pay for the brand as well.

That would cause quite a lot of changes. A lot of stuff in super markets, at least here in Europe, is private label, too. The manufacturers use it to test different prices, taste, etc. and I guess also to deter competition from entering the market.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com