Generic brand

Generic brand , also white goods or no-name product (from English no name , "nameless"), is a consumer product that is not primarily characterized by a distinguishable character - such as names, images, letters, numbers, audio symbols, three-dimensional design such as shape the goods and the packaging - under which the goods are sold, but differs from other products primarily through their belonging to a category. Generic brands are neutral, usually packaged in an emphatically simple manner and are priced in the lower range. The counterpart to generic brands are branded items .

As a rule, the generic brand is legally not a product without a brand , unless the sign under which it is sold has been deleted or has not been registered with the patent office's trademark register and is notoriously known.

In the United States , the first generic brands appeared in the 1970s. The German trade followed this example in the 1980s, first with food, especially with canned goods and basic foodstuffs. Soon these generic brands were replaced by trademarks that allow assignment to the respective retail chain.

Often goods are also referred to as "no-name products" that are sold under a trademark or a second brand of a manufacturer, but because of their low price (due to the elimination of advertising costs or better utilization of the first brand's production facilities) and partly differ in the quality of branded goods. In many cases, they are of equal quality or even identical to the branded products of the respective manufacturer, as independent tests prove.

For a long time it was disputed in the literature whether generic brands are anonymous goods or trademarks. Today, generic brands are given a minimal marking as so-called entry -level brands . A clear differentiation from traditional private label brands is rather difficult nowadays, but with generic brands the focus is more on the product category than on the actual brand. Examples of well-known entry-level brands are TiP by Real and ja! by Rewe.

Web links

Cheap products are ending their triumphant advance. - For the first time in years, sales of no-name private labels in the grocery trade are falling. The supermarkets are now focusing on the premium segment. The time 37/2010 from October 22, 2010

Individual evidence

^ Johannes B. Berentzen: Private label management: Solution Selling in vertical value creation networks . Springer-Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-8349-1892-5 , pp. 45 .

[1] Johannes B. Berentzen: Private label management: Solution Selling in vertical value creation networks . Springer-Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-8349-1892-5 , pp. 45 .