gOj the tuna industry is yet in its infancy. Other food industries, 

 especially the meat industry, have successfully developed prepared 

 products which only a few years ago would have been considered unlikely. 



Name Brands and Private Labels 



A "name brajid", as opposed to the term "private label", is the 

 designation applied to products which are both advertised and sold 

 throughout the United States, Using this definition, the overwheLning 

 choice amiong household consumers is for canned tuna under the "big", 

 well advertised, name brands. 



Retail grocers everywhere prefer to carry only those items which 

 sell best whether they be tuna or any other product. Independent re- 

 tail grocers usually carry only the few nationally advertised brands. 

 They may, in addition, carry one or two imported or lesser known domes- 

 tic packs. Among chain stores, the trend is not so clear cut. Some 

 large retail chain grocers prefer to carry only a few brands of a sin- 

 gle commodity. They believe that carrying a large number of brands 

 confuses their customers and makes it necessary to carry larger total 

 inventories. Other chains will carry a fairly large number of brands 

 to provide their customers a variety and a spread of prices. Most 

 chain grocers also carry canned tuna under one or more private labels. 

 These generally fall in more than one category. Most private labels 

 are generally not distributed nationally except by chain stores having 

 outlets in a major portion of the country. In addition, private la- 

 bels are also made up and used by certain large wholesale grocers. In 

 both of these instances, these private label owners consider theiaselves 

 in the name brand category, although they are not on the basis of the 

 definition previously given. It is their feeling that they have dev- 

 eloped a reputation and educated their customers to their brand name, 

 auid as such the name is as much a "name brand" as any other. 



A consumer analysis, conducted in 1952 by a Seattle newspaper, 

 in which questionnaires were completed and returned by 5000 families, 

 indicated that 45 8 percent preferred or regularly purchased one of 

 the well-known name brands of tuna, 25.7 percent purchased another 

 prominent name brand, and 5^k percent purchased one of the imported 

 brands. These were the top three in order of preference. It would 

 appear that the first two were a case of purchase by name brand since 

 several other varieties were in the same price range. Fielative avail- 

 ability of the various brands was not considered, but it probably 



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