In the latest talk of our Research Seminar Series Prof. Kusum Ailawadi from University Tuck at Dartmouth (US) presented her and her co-workers’ research on private label supply by national brand manufacturers.

Private label forms a very substantial portion of total consumer packaged goods sales in many countries. Prof. Ailawadi’s work integrates the conceptual and theoretical literature on motivations for private label supply by national brand manufacturers to identify relevant drivers of the “dual tracking” decision and then tests them with unique data containing the identity of private label suppliers across all packaged good categories for retailers accounting for almost 70% of sales in a major European market. Her empirical analysis examines the association of these drivers with the decision to supply private label to each retailer and the conditional decision to supply exclusively to that retailer. Several results align well with received insights with only few exceptions.

While deeper exploring the topic Prof. Ailawadi also gave insights into who supplies private labels and why, as well as when national brand manufacture should supply them.

The Marketing department at WU thanks Prof. Ailawadi for her time and the sharing of her knowledge.

Nadya Knops