With retailing picking up and consumers becoming choosy, it becomes vital for the retailers to look out for new avenues and opportunities to make their customers happy. Intense competition in the market has forced retailers to rethink on their strategies. The retail market being price sensitive calls for in-depth deliberation and delivery of retail mix. Constant efforts are being made to deliver high value added products and services to the customers. Popular brands having national presence are able to create entry barriers through their strong distribution channel and heavy promotion. Barriers such as heavy promotion in turn increases the marketing cost of national brands and customers look towards the industry to unburden the same. This throws an opportunity for retailers to offer products in the form of private labels, thereby, reducing the promotional expenses. The objective of developing and delivering private label is to close the value gaps not delivered by so called national brands. The study contends that private brands offered by retailers are able to make their mark and compete with national brands on price and quality grounds. Competition is becoming stiff day by day and retailers are getting more and more organized. There is also an increase in demand for private labels which mutually benefits the retailers and customers. With the emergence of private labels, retailers are able to differentiate, build store loyalty and create competitive advantage for themselves. This paper makes an attempt to identify the factors driving customers to the stores, examines the relationship of various variables with store loyalty, explores the possible growth rate in categories such as apparels, consumer durables, life style products and food products and estimates overall percentage contribution of private labels in total sales of the stores.

As the retail market is witnessing a striking presence of private brands, it becomes obvious to explore the different strategies adopted by retailers to position their stores in the minds of the customers. Retailers compete on a number of dimensions. Strategic variables such as retail mix, overcoming rivalry among national brands and private labels and the scarcity of shelf space are some of the major challenges to the retailers.

Do Private Brands Result in Store Loyalty? An Empirical Study in Bangalore, retail market, value added products, national brands, promotional expenses, quality grounds, private labels, competitive advantage, , life style products and food products, private brands, Strategic variables.