4.2.2 Interview with ICA Private La

4.2.2 Interview with ICA Private Label Manager
ICA has a corporate brand strategy that means ICA Basic for example is called product line, ICA is the brand: ICA I Love eco, ICA Got liv, ICA Selection they are considered as product line. It was seen that the market share of Euro shopper- was actually a private label. The name was owned by a company which is AMS, which is own by ten retailer in Europe. In the Swedish market the market share for Euro shopper went down for couple of years back to 2011. ICA received from store owners that consumers didn’t believe in that brand any longer. At that time ICA was focusing on and positioned as a mid- price company. But the company, seeing the situation and started to have an alternative and low price point alternative. This was denoted by the manager as at that time did not exist in the corporate brand strategies. Consider the market and potential opportunities might be the reasons ICA took action , improved all price position or price perception of ICA , hence, ICA included a first price offering within the ICA corporate brand strategies: launched ICA Basic with new criteria .All Euro shopper assortment were went through and changed was make in recipe based on the new flat form.
It was strongly believed by the manager as ICA is one of the most famous brands in Sweden so just putting the ICA Brand on that product the manager believed that it would get much higher awareness.
At this time, ICA Basic is very well known now in Sweden and very high recognition among Swedish consumers.
ICA basic is considered where target consumers are those who think price is the most important; the quality requirement “must be okay”. For that reason certain different target group that are more willing to purchase ICA Basic. However, consumer in general have different ambition in different category ”You might be a person that buy premium product in one category but preferred lower price to other product categorizes”, the manager stressed that.
Regarding quality, the manager gave opinion that consumer trust ICA that the quality is okay along with reasonable price. ICA Basic is went through special testing procedures that means that ICA Basic products have to live up to a certain quality level .There is a set standard for ICA Basic as the example of green bean it might be the same quality of the bean, but when the bean was picked, what differ was the number of broken bean that allowed to be in packets, for instance, for ICA product perhaps it is 10% bean but for ICA Basic it might be accepted at 15% broken. Therefore that is sometimes differs the quality requirement although the taste of the bean might be the same. Sometimes it could be the package; ICA Basic has simple packaging compared to other better well-designed packages (zip able packages). When were asked about the positioning of ICA Basic compare with competitors it was answered by the manager that that ICA Basic is to compete with same products from other competitor with Coop x-tra (by Coop), Eldorado(by Axfood) and similar brand by City Gross. Regarding question about advertising, it was mentioned that using TV advertising for first generation PLBs is quite seldom.
However, it was used when the brand when first launched in Swedish market. Beside ICA Basic as a strategy to compete with other competitors, ICA still keeps launching more value-added products in the portfolio.