Focus on household: Brands all washed up

Sometimes an economic situation gets so bad that it threatens to – as the team behind Domestos would put it – kill weak brands dead. Just look at what’s happened to Comet, Jessops, HMV and Blockbuster. But they are not the only household names that have been caught out. Some of the brands in the household category itself are also in trouble.

Although the brands still dominate the market with an 81.7% value share, own-label has been wiping the floor with them in terms of growth over the past year. Value sales of own-label products have surged 10.2% on volumes up 4.5%, according to the latest Kantar Worldpanel data [52 w/e 28 October 2012]. Branded sales, on the other hand, have risen just 1% and volume sales have actually fallen by 3.3% – the key factor behind the overall category’s 1.1% volume fall (total value sales grew 2.6%). ian

So have the likes of P&G simply lost out to cheaper own-label products or have rival brands also managed to clean up at their expense? And why is the reverse happening in paper products, where brands are outperforming own label?