The battle of brands in the Swedish market for consumer packaged food: A cross-category examination of brand preference and liking

Abstract

In a very dynamic industry such as the retail industry, it is important to get an overall view of differences in brand strength between international vs domestic brands, store brands vs manufacturer brands and single-category vs extended multi-category brands. We propose that a fruitful approach to obtain a nuanced comparison of brand strength at a general level, across categories and brand strategies, is to combine the measures brand preference and brand liking. By doing so, three different types of brand strength emerge. The results, based on a web survey conducted with 4 × 500 Swedish consumers, show that although the domestic brands are dominating in terms of presence (as expected), there is no support that domestic brands generally are more liked or preferred than international brands. Moreover, the analysis shows that manufacturer brands out-perform store brands in terms of preference, and that single-category brands appear to be stronger than multi-category brands.