The supermarket chain embraces the concept that it is building brands, not just selling private-label foods and beverages.
Innovative marketing plus effective in-store merchandising and support of its private labels demonstrate that Safeway Inc. has made the leap from thinking about private label as merely a low-price alternative to have on its shelves to treating its private labels as CPG companies treat their brands. The result — private-label sales growth at Safeway is outpacing branded sales growth by a three-to-one margin.
PLBuyer magazine named Safeway, Pleasanton, Calif., its 2012 Private Label Retailer of the Year because of its innovative marketing, promotional activities and merchandising for its private labels. (PLBuyer, like Dairy Foods, is published by BNP Media.) Safeway’s marketing of Open Nature points the way for other retailers who want to turn their private labels into distinctive assets they can use to attract shoppers and distinguish their stores in the increasingly competitive food retailing landscape. Safeway’s in-store merchandising and its use of all its assets from stores to its weekly ad circulars to its Web site for promoting private-label sales, also holds lessons for other retailers, Safeway watchers agree.