Over the past year, Target has been replacing their store brand products with redesigned and re-branded “Up & Up” products. The previous store brand products very clearly took their design and color schemes from the brand leader they were imitating. For example, their old bottle of ibuprofen closely resembled a bottle of Advil. This is the tried and true method of packaging store brands: copy the leader’s design as closely as you can without trademark or copyright infringement.
Now, the new Target ibuprofen bottle bears no resemblance to Advil.
From the b-school perspective, this is an attempt to create brand equity and customer loyalty in the Target “Up & Up” brand, rather than just mooch of the brand equity of Advil and other “name brands.” On the one hand, it’s a good long-term play that tells consumers there is inherent value in the Target brand, not just in being a cheaper knock-off, and it allows them to maintain a unified design look throughout the store.
But it’s a risky strategy that could backfire. If customers don’t take to the new look by even just a small percentage, it could cost millions. To mitigate their risk, I’m sure Target did plenty of due diligence in market research and A/B testing.
Store brands are big business. They’re generally more profitable for the retailer than selling the name brands, and companies like Target even employ third party “testers” to make sure their quality is on par with the name brands. If we start to see some design or color tweaks to the Up & Up packaging, we’ll know they weren’t performing as well as desired.
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Tags: marketing
It’s a good thing that Target decided to change their packaging, besides the fact that their previous Ibuprofen bottles looked a lot like the ones from Left 4 Dead.