Last week we published a study about the emergence and popularity of "dupes" in the cosmetics industry (
check it out here!) where we discovered that Canadian women were far more likely to buy the dupe than the original, higher priced beauty product.
We were wondering how that sentiment would transfer over to the grocery aisle. Private labels are well established in Canada and while many store brands offer similar products to national brands, there is less of a direct "dupe" of the packaging and products of a national brand at play in grocery.
In addition, the relative price of the National brand of cookie or laundry detergent is much lower than the high-end creams and cosmetics we see being copied in the beauty industry.
So what did we find:
Generally, about one-third of Canadian grocery showed a keen interest in "dupe" grocery products with saving money being the primary motivator while an additional 50% of consumers would try dupe grocery products only if the quality was "very similar"
We asked our agents who indicated that they have purchased grocery store dupes in the past to tell us about their experience was with them:
"I would purchase dupes/store brands of any item, depending on the deals or promotional offers I have. A good majority of my shopping involves couponing, price matching, online cashback platforms, and using store loyalty cards. The more likely I am to be able to stack multiple of these on any particular product will influence which product I will purchase."
"I am more selective in some categories than others. Ice cream must be real ice cream not the stuff that sits in your bowl and doesn't melt for a day."
"I am interested in dupes of almost anything I buy, to try and save money. But only if the product is of similar quality to the name brand."
We asked our agents to think about the name brand vs the "dupe" for seven grocery store products, and had them let us know which one they’d actually put in their shopping cart: