The economy is in the tank.  Consumer spending and confidence are both at miserable lows.  Retail sales are not any better.  The current economic situation isn't very positive for a majority of brands and categories.  One bright spot is the private label business.  You know, the generic, or store brand, line of products.  Sometimes they are as generic as Target-brand dish washing powder.  Other times they are "branded" like the Equate line of products at Wal-Mart.  Regardless of the branding, they are the lowest priced items in any given category.  They can be 30-40% cheaper than their national brand counterparts.  Given this cost savings, it is easy to see why private label brands are gaining market share as consumers look to pinch pennies everywhere they can.

This new-found thriftiness brings up the question of how much does the brand mean to items that are essentially commodities?  Shampoo, soap, toilet paper, band-aids, cereal.  All things that we all use but also all things that are used in the privacy of our homes.  No one sees or knows which brands of these things we use so the emotional purchasing of a brand or label to impress others is not present.  Sure, a lot of us want to drive a nice car or wear an alligator on our shirt and ladies want to carry the trendiest handbag.  These needs are driven to impress others or give us a feeling of fitting in with some segment of the population.  So at some level I understand the branding, particularly premium branding, associated with these items.  But frosted flakes and toilet paper?  I would guess that the store brands of each of these would work just fine for us while saving us money.  I would even bet that if you took these items out the national branded packaging most consumers would not notice the difference.  Are Tony the Tiger or Don't Squeeze the Charmain really what makes us pay more for these commodities?

Wal-Mart has grown into the  world's largest retailer over the past few decades by being proud of the being the least expensive place in town for household goods.  Over the past year they have further embraced this position with the Save Money. Live Better tag line.  While this should help to get consumers back in to the stores, the question remains if they will go the generic, private-label route once in the store.  The 1,000 store chain Aldi is a no-frills all private label and generic store.  With a little more of a marketing push, viral in particular, Aldi could become the brand and store de rigour over the first few years of the Obama administration.

I predict over the next few years that the new cool and popular thing to do will be to buy the cheapest items within these categories.  Brown lunch sacks, recyclable of course, will become the new designer bag and people will be proud to show it off in public.  We will go so far from conspicuous consumption that a whole new subculture of completely inconspicuous consumption will emerge.  Cheap, I mean less expensive,  will be cool and generic will be popular.....from Going Green to Saving Green.