No matter if we’re talking about cereal, cough syrup or batteries, products featuring nationally recognized name brands tend to cost more than their generic store-brand counterparts. But the assumption that higher price means higher quality is fading. The Great Recession brought with it new opportunities for supermarkets and drugstores to reach out to consumers who grew increasingly eager to save on everyday purchases. One of the simplest strategies to trim bills has been to switch to cheaper brands — or rather, generic “no-name” brands sold only at specific chains. These products, also categorized as store brands or private-label goods, include Archer Farms, available only at Target, Whole Foods’ 365 Everyday Value line and eponymous labels at CVS and Publix, among other stores. By late 2010, surveys indicated that 93% of consumers had changed their grocery-shopping habits because of the economic downturn, and many of them did so by trying out more store-branded goods, sampling everything from generic shampoo to generic frozen pizza. (MORE: Season of Giving? Holiday Shopping Hits New Heights of Selfishness with ‘Self-Gifting’) For the most part, consumers have been impressed by the no-name brands, with many of them scoring well in blind taste tests. (The taste tests referenced were for things like orange juice and soup, not shampoo — though it’d be really impressive if any shampoo scored well in a taste-off.) Consumers have also gotten clued in to the fact that many “generic” store-brand foods are actually made by the same companies that produce the higher-priced name-brand stuff. The foods have been known to come out of the same factories, with the same ingredients inside and everything, with the only difference being the label. The result is that often, switching to a store brand is an easy way to save 30% or so, without sacrificing quality. Because store-brand sales are often more profitable than those of national brands, major chains have been putting more effort into bringing generics to the marketplace. It’s been reported that the growth of store-brand sales at Safeway has been outpacing national … Continue reading Brand Names Just Don’t Mean as Much Anymore