Dropping the Floor, Raising the Roof and Recalibrating the Brand Continuum
In Carol's latest article for the International Licensing Merchandiser's Association (LIMA), Carol shares how retailers' passions for price separation and portfolio diversity are converging to create favorable conditions for national and licensed brands.
The business and retail media has been all over the sometimes baffling bifurcation in retail that has luxury brands such as Burberry and Prada thriving along with deep discounters such as Aldi and Lidl, while middle-of-the-road players like J.C. Penney struggle. In response, retailers are building bigger gulfs between “good” and “best” within their widening “good, better, best” continuums in order to capitalize on contrast and skim from both ends of the spectrum. This expansion doesn’t stop at price, however. Retailers are exercising new brand options as well. Private brands are no longer retailers’ default choice at the lower end, and the fate of national and licensed brands is no longer determined by price alone.
U.K. retailers are experiencing the same melting away of the middle as hard discounters such as Aldi and Lidl and better players such as Sainsbury's and Waitrose wick away share. By comparison, in January, Tesco's market share dipped below 30% for the first time since 2005 after a particularly poor holiday.