Private Label Research: A Review of Consumer Purchase Decision Models

This study reviews the empirical research on the topic of private label consumers published in international journals in the last 20 years (1996–2016). A comprehensive data base of 109 articles was built including information about the journals where they were published, the countries and variables studied. The analysis indicates that Europe and the USA account for more than two thirds of the published studies. There is a high concentration of the publications, since 40% of the papers were published in just four journals, all included in the Scimago Journal Rank. The key consumer characteristics that prior researchers have found to influence private labels’ purchase decision process are also identified and categorized. Based on the statistically significant results obtained by previous research, it can be concluded that perceptual variables mostly influence consumers’ attitude towards private label while psychographic variables tend to have an effect on private label purchase intention. Therefore, future research could be addressed to estimate an empirical model in order to clarify this issue.