Top Consumer Goods Brands Fight Bruising Wars With Private Labels In Europe

Major consumer goods brands are finding it hard to turn back expanding sales of supermarkets' own-label products in Europe. Advancing private labels are grabbing market share from household goods brands, such as Nestle and Unilever, as well as causing erosions in prices and margins. According to market research firm IRI, however, sales of own-label products are slowing down, as leading supermarkets cut prices on top brands as part of their efforts to battle discount retailers, such as Aldi and Lidl from Germany. In 2014, own-label products lost 0.1 percentage point of market share, a first since 2007, data from IRI showed.