From the Retail Brand to the Retail-er as a Brand: themes and issues in retail branding research

When we discuss research into retail branding, the natural starting point is the retail product brand – invariably referred to as the “private brand”, the “store brand” or the “retail brand”. Private brands have generated a vast body of research on both sides of the Atlantic over the past forty years. In a recent review article, Hyman et al (2010) generated 73 articles published since 1990, simply through a key word search in the Business Source Premier database. Whilst such an approach is likely to underestimate the total volume of material, this figure is nonetheless impressive. The authors also comment on the variety within this body of work in terms of the origin of the article (ie USA or not), the product categories investigated, the research methods used (eg sample frames, sample sizes and types of panel data), and the analytical tools employed.