I worked at London Drugs for two and a half years and I never noticed their use of private labels until it was mentioned today in class. From my perspective, all the moisturizers in the moisturizer section were the same, q-tips were with the q-tips, and cotton balls were all the same for all I cared. Customers rarely asked me to locate a “London Drugs” brand product. It didn’t seem like something that a customer would enter with on their list of things to buy, but they would end up buying it anyways. The only reason I could see someone buying the brand would be because of the price. The appearance of the brand was very plain and didn’t seem to distinguish itself from the other more well-known ones. After further thought, I realized that it must have been because London Drugs carried such a strong brand and the customers who shopped there had a strong sense of brand loyalty.
The London Drugs brand is a lot stronger than I realized. They got themselves involved in so many different product categories in their store. They had their own brand of shampoo, conditioner, and moisturizers. They had their own brand of q-tips. They had a diverse number of vitamins in the vitamins section. They even had their own cotton balls.
Some of the items they had a private label for were standard across the industry. For example, vitamins don’t really change except for price.