Private Label in China 2010: A Market Analysis

Access Asia
December 2, 2010
82 Pages - SKU: ACS6002933
License type:
Countries covered: China

This report covers the existence and development of private label (otherwise known as own brand and store brand) goods within the retailing industry in the People’s Republic of China, and includes coverage of both food and non-food products offered as private label by leading retail chains in China.

KEY REPORT FEATURES

This recently updated report includes:

  • An historical analysis of the development of private label in China to date by sector;
  • Case studies and examples of private label lines among key retail companies within the key retail sectors;
  • Case studies of private label innovation, packaging design, co-branding, multiple availability, copyright infringement, quality issues, online sales, segment penetration, shelf placement and price point competition with leading national/global brands in each sector.
  • Analysis of consumer and supplier responses to the development of private label;
  • An overview of China’s total retail market with sales statistics up to 2010;
  • Analysis of the total historical private label market t value up to 2009 and forecast growth up to 2014;
  • Store checks giving examples of private label goods in key sectors, including product description, brand name, retail company, pack size and price;
  • Overview of China’s demographics and macroeconomics.




Additional Information

Executive Summary

Proprietary brands seem to have been adopted quite early by domestic retailers, contrary to the popular belief that foreign retailers were to first to introduce private label into the country. Based on available sources, Shanghai Kaikai Department Store was the first to introduce a store brand in 1987, under the Kaikai name, for a line of apparel. Perhaps the health and beauty chain store belonging to Hong Kong’s Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., Watson’s, was next. Watson’s entered China in 1989.

Another local retailer, in this instance Nong Gong Shang, also had an early start with private label with the introduction of its first private label lines in 1995, ahead of France’s Carrefour, which introduced its Carrefour Quality Line only in 1999. Shanghai-based Lianhua was also relatively early, with its private label appearing in 1996. However, the significant adoption of private label in China only really started to grow with the opening up of the country’s retail market to foreign retailers and the expansion of modern retailing.

So, private label already has more than 20 years of history in China, but for most of that time the presence and significance has been negligible. Yet, in the last five years, that situation has significantly changed. Private label sales and product variety have begun to show very significant growth in the last few years, and with that growth an increased significance in the total retail market. The ramifications are only just starting to be felt in the wider retail, fresh produce and manufacturing industries in China, but already their significance is already beginning to emerge as profound changes in the way these industries work.

This latest edition is much expanded on the previous one, and includes a wide range of case studies of private label development at leading retailers in China. As well as private label product ranges and price comparisons, the report also looks at the varying strategies for private label development across different retail sectors, and among the leading players in each sector, compares packaging and shelf-placement strategies, covers the emergence of different private label brands for low/mid/high-price product ranges and analyses the changing retailer-consumer and retailer-supplier relationships as private label becomes increasingly significant to more sectors of the market.

Our findings show that, at the current rate of development, private label is going to become very significant to retailers, suppliers and consumers in the coming years. In more developed retail economies, private label tends to come to the fore once a high degree of market penetration and consolidation has been reached, but China (as usual) is proving different. China’s retailers are heading into private label faster and sooner than the old model of retail development would predict, and it will have a significant role to play in shaping how the retail industry develops in the coming years.

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