Opinion BY debbie millman

The Great White Discount

The private label revolution began in Europe in the 1970s, when the leading UK drug chain, Boots, began to market their lower priced, retailer-owned products with more premium packaging previously reserved for national brands. The radical departure from basic no-frills packaging paid off: products marketed under the Boots label now account for almost 50% of total sales. Three decades later, Carrefour, the world’s second largest retailer after Walmart (and France’s #1 supermarket chain) is attempting to respond to the current economic climate with their introduction of 400 products marketed under the Carrefour Discount brand, including food, household goods and personal care products. Carrefour executive Gilles Petit, announced that the “Carrefour Discount range is designed to compete with deep-discount stores” and “Carrefour wants to improve its image on price.”

Carrefour’s prices might be better, but their packaging isn’t. Given the recent propensity for brands to utilize the color white, it is not surprising that this line employs the same tactic. The original Carrefour logo has remained intact, but the word “Discount” has been added to the nomenclature in a casual upper and lower case hand-drawn script that would be better suited on school supplies.

The overall design architecture is unimaginatively straightforward; the information on all of the packs follows a fairly rigid flush-left type/flush right imagery and the product photography is simple and unfussy. The similarities to Walmart’s redesigned Great Value packaging are somewhat suspect, but what is utterly baffling is how lackluster the overall brand is. Thirty years ago, the European market showed the rest of the world that consumers could recognize great value and great packaging. It’s a shame the tradition ends here.

The full line of Carrefour Discount products can be found here.

Thanks to Alex for the tip.

DATE: Jul.16.2009CATEGORY: Consumer products 2 COMMENTS

Gertrude’s comment is:

And you would not even imagine the deceptive effect of the neat and colorful pictures compared to the inner product. Those all-white packagings are perfect to hide the poor quality of the products.
It is not actually "deep discount", but "low products" to me... And the poor design does not solve it all.

On Aug.14.2009 at 08:06 AM

Michel Balzer’s comment is:

We have something simular in germany: http://images.google.de/images?hl=de&source=hp&q=ja!%20rewe&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

It's »ja!« from the Rewe Group.

(I'm just going thru your archive, so no wonder why I comment on this older article)

On Dec.22.2009 at 06:48 AM

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