Thai consumers’ purchase decisions and private label brands

Private label brands have achieved double-digit growth in the Thai market. To expand market share, private label brands need to identify clearly what triggers consumer purchases. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between consumer decision-making styles and actual purchases of private label products in a Thai market context, using price consciousness, quality consciousness, brand consciousness, value consciousness, and risk perception as factors for investigation.

Responses from a total of 240 respondents from four product categories were collected through mall intercepts in five hypermarkets and supermarkets in Bangkok, and a regression-based model was employed to identify the associations.

The results indicate a significant relationship between price-conscious and brand-conscious consumers, and private label purchases and show that the relationship between quality-conscious, value-conscious, and risk-adverse consumers and private label purchases is insignificant. It concludes that price-conscious consumers are the ones most likely to purchase private label products in low-differentiation categories. An opposite relationship prevails for consumers who are brand conscious in low-differentiation, high-risk, and low-risk categories.

The outcomes of this research suggest that private label brands should maintain a low-price strategy while striving for continuous improvement in quality to capture additional quality- and value-conscious consumers. It also suggests that national brands invest in brand-building strategies rather than competing on price.

This study enhances an understanding of consumer decision-making characteristics for actual private label purchases rather than the intention to purchase and is useful in suggesting an alternative to socio-economic factors as a method of identifying private label purchasers.