A few weeks back, I came out and claimed that “brand loyalty is dying.” A big claim, to be sure, but one I made because I had to get your attention – and it was well-supported by the evidence.
I pointed out that after centuries of brand-focused behavior, the “Great Trade-Down” meant consumers were becoming increasingly brand-agnostic and focused on the thing itself, not necessarily who manufactured or marketed it. In other words, folks are increasingly becoming ingredient households rather than brand households. They’re building baskets around flexibility, value, convenience, and meal solutions rather than rigid allegiance to brand labels
But a new study from Acosta Group suggests there’s one important exception: fresh foods.
The research, based on a survey of more than 2,200 U.S. shoppers who purchased bakery bread, cheese, salsa, or refrigerated pasta within the previous three months, found that fresh departments continue operating under a different set of consumer “rules, as it were.
To be clear, freshness and quality remain the primary drivers of purchase decisions, followed closely by price.
But unlike much of the center store, trusted brands continue to play a meaningful role in how consumers evaluate fresh products.
As Acosta’s Kathy Risch put it, “Freshness gets products considered, but brand often gets products chosen.“
As it turns out, across all the categories studied, national brands generated a 17% higher “fair price” perception than store brands. The bottom line is shoppers consistently believed branded fresh products deserved a higher price than their private-label counterparts.
The effect was particularly pronounced in categories where quality can be difficult to judge before purchase.
Refrigerated pasta emerged as one of the most brand-influenced categories in the study, with national brands outperforming on appeal, trust, and preference. Refrigerated salsa told a different story. Shoppers rated store brands and national brands similarly on quality and appeal… but they still gravitated toward national brands when making a final purchase decision.
So, what’s happening here?
The “Economy” of the Fresh Category Is Changing
Well, I think the answer is less about loyalty and more about confidence.
At the end of the day, when consumers buy cereal, canned vegetables or pasta sauce, comparing alternatives is pretty easy; the perceived risk of making a bad choice is low.
But the fresh categories are very different. Refrigerated foods, deli items, specialty cheeses, and prepared foods pose more uncertainty. “Is that meat OK? Has this been on the shelf too long? Is that how it’s supposed to look?”
Shoppers here will tend to have a tougher time evaluating quality before purchase.
Brands – trusted brands – do a lot to reduce that uncertainty.
That’s why, for me, the most important finding in the report isn’t the 17% premium perception. It’s that almost half of shoppers reported purchasing a mix of national and private-label products in fresh categories.
It looks as though consumers increasingly view the two as complementary, rather than competing, choices.
Even more interesting, self-described private-label loyalists still assigned higher value perceptions to national brands for certain fresh-food occasions.
The generational findings are equally revealing. A lot of ink and bandwidth has been dedicated to understanding younger shoppers’ mindsets and habits. In the Acosta study, Millennials and Gen Z shoppers showed the highest willingness to pay premiums for national brands in fresh categories. Gen Z assigned national brands a 21% higher fair-price perception than private labels. That’s the largest premium gap of any generation Acosta studied.
The way I see it, the most important takeaway from the Acosta research is the suggestion that fresh departments are becoming a kind of confidence economy.
Trust, consistency, and quality – all traditional strengths of the big national brands – still matter there in ways they increasingly do not elsewhere in the store.
So, I stand by my earlier statement: Brand loyalty is dying, at least across huge swathes of the supermarket..
Fresh foods, however, appear to be the “last stand,” one of the last places where shoppers still really want reassurance before they buy. The winning move is how to use private label and national brands to build confidence where it’s needed most.
