Wall Street Journal: At the Supermarket Checkout, Frugality Trumps Brand Loyalty

By: TraderMark Sunday, November 09, 2008 2:00 PM

Sectors: Business Services , Consumer Staples

Symbols: CVS, KMB, WFMI

enter symbol

enter search string

Author

Author's Bio and Articles
Visit Author's Website

Alerts by Email

Research Articles
Stock Ranking Changes
We never spam!

In the end economics trumps all... should be interesting for a country where much of the populace pays up for "brand". As we said in many previous entries - Americans will turn into savers, voluntary or not. "Back to Basics" is going to be "hot" (Right, Paris?)

When Summer Mills visited her local CVS drugstore recently, to save a few dollars she bought the store-brand facial scrub rather than the Olay version she normally uses. "I thought I'd be able to tell the difference, but I couldn't -- I looked at the ingredients and they seemed almost the same," says 30-year-old Ms. Mills, a stay-at-home mother of two in Ardmore, Okla. On her next shopping trip, "I'm going to buy the store-brand moisturizer and cleanser -- it's less money."
Many Americans are changing their everyday purchases and abandoning brand loyalty, prompted by the persistent financial pressure of rising food, gasoline and electricity price. From coloring hair at home instead of at the salon to trying cheaper laundry detergents, new evidence indicates that Americans are modifying even minor household habits to save money.
Kimberly-Clark Corp. CEO Thomas Falk noted that sales of the company's potty-training pants, once one of the biggest sales-growth products in the baby aisle, have fallen off in recent months.

Next Page >>