A few years ago, Australian supermarkets (Coles and Woolworths) started manufacturing and selling their own versions of popular products, usually with preferred placement and 10-20% lower price.

But your point remains valid here. A small number of companies control a huge percentage of supply.

That happens in the US as well. Aldi and Costco have a lot of their own brands. Roundys used to be the generic brand of a nearby grocery store, but then Kroger bought them out. Kroger owns multiple chains of grocery stores across the country, including different ones in the same town sometimes.

The funny thing is that they probably use the same manufacturers as the popular brands and just also a different label on it.

No "probably" about it. The price of entry into a supermarket's inventory is often a discounted-enough rate on white-label stuff that they can sell right beside you. I got an education stocking shelves at a supermarket as a kid. Pretty hard not to make the connection when the bakery dropped off loaves of store brand and their brand, intermixed in the same trays, and we had to separate them out.

> The funny thing is that they probably use the same manufacturers as the popular brands and just also a different label on it.

They absolutely do. For example, Costco has two Kirkland Signature vodkas. One of them is Grey Goose, and the other I forgot. Skyy? Same goes for their tequila, it's all Jose Cuervo.

Look up Frank-Lin distillers sometime.

https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/bztu6ot3xumpeiiiygdzaa

http://www.frank-lin.com/

http://www.dailyrepublic.com/news/topstories/fairfield-offic...

http://www.webcitation.org/5jjmHRr9C

and the rest of the grocery stores are probably safeway..

This happens in all supermarkets of Europe, basically. Examples from Germany:

Depending on the store you get either mostly only store products (Aldi, Lidl), both store products and brand products (Kaufland, Rewe?) or mostly brand products (likely Edeka)

The case of what you mentioned is the reason why the Schwarz Group (Lidl and Kaufland) are moving overseas, respectively to the US and to Australia: there isn't much price competition.

Disclaimer: work for them.

American grocery stores have been doing this for a long time as well. Often their products taste better too because they use less added sugars and preservatives.

I remember a story about M&S in the U.K. Up until a few years ago they only sold their own brand food, which had a higher price and a higher perceived quality to other supermarket brands.

The story goes that their biscuits are made in the same factory and cooked in the same batch as other brands, but M&S required that their biscuits be taken from the centre of the tray where they were cooked in the oven more evenly.

I swore off Nilla Wafers in favor of store brands in the 90's because Nabisco ruined them by trying to extend the shelf life with preservatives so much that they were never crispy out of a fresh box and had an awful taste. Years later I discovered they changed their ways with a foil lining instead of the preservative overload but I still won't buy them.

Great diagram, but it misses precisely what I found surprising about the whole thing, which is that they also own non-food brands (Axe etc.).

Here's a older brand map that also includes the non-food products:

https://crueltyfreeblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/foodmap....

Sometimes I wish someone would pass a law that forbid the modern use of brands. If you are a company, anything you control should carry your own name first and foremost. It would remove the illusion of choice that the current market of manufactured goods and food strives to provide in order to avoid organised dissent.

Do you mean branding must reflect ownership?

Banning the use of brands obviously won't achieve anything desirable, but requiring transparent branding seems like it will improve the consumer market's spending decisions.

Of course, pro-free-market legislation will never make it through Republican-controlled Congress...

Restricting what brand names people can use is anything but "pro-free-market".

That wasn't the proposal, the proposal was to enforce better information availability to consumers by displaying the owners of the brand prominently.

IANANC but my understanding is that a true market is two-sided: it requires informed consumers. Initiatives that bolster the buyer-side of the market aren't anti-market.

Calling a newly proposed regulation "pro free market" legislation is a little orwellian.

How free is a monopolized market? If a regulation outlaws monopolies, does it improve or impede the market's freedom?

Regulations that improve market efficiency are good. Regulations that impede efficiency are bad. In practice, we do need regulations because real-world actors are not optimal rational agents.

I can see it from that point of view. I purposely don't use the phrase "free market" though, because I don't share the assumption that complete freedom is what leads to an efficient, well functioning market. There is all sorts of manipulation that is required for a "good" market, i.e. one that fulfills the goal of efficient allocation of goods.

The most basic is the enforcement of contracts, which I think everyone agrees on.

But regulations about truth in advertising fit in there too. Lists of ingredients and nutritional information on packaging are an onerous regulation that allow consumers to make better informed choices (and so lead IMO to a "better" market). (I think brand ownership transparency is close philosophically to requiring ingredients on food products.) There are many examples of regulations that promote market efficiency, which sellers don't like because they may have been making profits from the inefficiency, or from information asymmetry.

There are of course regulations which degrade market efficiency too, either by regulatory capture or ill-thought out "consumer protection" like price controls, rent control, etc.

My overall point is that the assumption that a market with the fewest controls is de-facto the "best" market should be examined closely - manipulations of the market (whether by regulation, taxes, etc.) should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis based on whether they promote or degrade market efficiency.

Okay. How about pro-efficient markets? Because certainly markets completely unrestrained leads to rent seeking.

The orwellianism already exists in the technical definition of "free market". The proposed regulation would be anti-lassiez-faire, but pro-free-market, to use the terminology that economists have pushed.

> better information availability to consumers

Devil's advocate...

Brands can be a mnemonic that helps customers quickly recall relative quality experienced in previous purchases. This may vary across brands, and my experiences with Dove soap don't tell me anything about my experiences with Ben and Jerry's ice cream.

Brands are often silly and misleading and I try to avoid them, but they aren't inherently malicious by default.

Any medium that can manipulate can also inform.

Yes, exactly - informed consumers are one of the requirements for a free market. Agents cannot act rationally when information is obscured.

In this case, the information is technically available but obscured such that consumers cannot make educated purchasing decisions without expending an irrational amount of time... thereby reducing supply-side competition.

Even if the information was available, most consumers don't study the entire supply chain of a product or service. We trust legislation to keep poisons out of our foods and punish cartels.

Smith's original phrasing wasn't "free market" it was "freely competitive market". They're very different concepts.

Depends on how you view “free market.” Some would say that, for a free market to work at all, you need informed choice on the side of consumers. Transparent branding would definitely be included in that.

You'd think so, but Nestle already does this of their own free will and they don't really seem to suffer for it.

I dont know about that, why shouldn't a corporation, effectively a person, use lawful speech to define how the world sees it? If you care enough, it easy enough to be informed about who is producing your food.

I feel this is something like identity politics, and something that really does not need regulation except to allow those to identify however they wish, with no determent to others.

Because a corporation should not be considered "effectively a person".

Corporations are made up of people, yes, but giving them personhood is a pretty dangerous idea. Should they get to vote? Obviously, the answer has to be "no" or else people will register companies to rig elections.

If they can't vote, are they really people?

> Corporations are made up of people, yes, but giving them personhood is a pretty dangerous idea. Should they get to vote? Obviously, the answer has to be "no" or else people will register companies to rig elections.

This logic is hugely flawed. Since we work off of a one-person-gets-one-ballot system, grouping people together (as in a corporation) and giving them a vote wouldn't make any sense. By contrast, you can't "use up" your speech rights: Each person is allowed an unlimited amount of legal speech, and I don't think there's a compelling philosophical argument that a group of people speaking together isn't protected. There may be _pragmatic_ arguments, but that's another ballgame altogether, since the entire point of the Constitution is that it's _not_ subject to the pragmatism/whims of the time.

I'm not saying that "corporations should be legally modeled as people" is an ironclad truth, but none of your objections make sense.

the persons in the corporation would not lose their vote. the corporation is just one additional person, meaning someone could create multiple corporate persons and multiply their vote (at least, in OP's hypothetical scenario)

I think you misunderstand the argument made by many who say "a corporation is people". "Corporate personhood" is just a word the left uses to make it sound crazy.

In reality, the argument is that you can't restrict a corporation's speech because using a corporation to speak is merely a form or method people use to speak.

You could speak via billboards, grass roots organizations, a radio show, lettets, or even a company you own.

The government can't curtail your speech no matter the method.

more generally, "corporate personhood" in US law, going back to at least the 1790s and in other countries going back even longer, serves the legal purpose of establishing that when people work together to do something under the "corporate" banner (which allows them to have a succession of members working toward a common goal and pooling resources), they retain rights like speech, property ownership, and ability to enter into or terminate contracts including hiring and firing employees. This connects to the idea (expressed by chief justice Marshall) that "The great object of an incorporation is to bestow the character and properties of individuality on a collective and changing body of men."

Sheesh I wish I had read your response before posting my own. This more succinctly captures what I'm trying to say.

Right, and that's what I'm saying is flawed logic and a bad analogy for speech rights. Putting people in different groupings doesn't change how many votes they get, and saying that "corporations are people means corporations get their own separate vote" is a gross misunderstanding of what we're talking about. When someone says "corporations are people", they're saying "corporations are simply a grouping of people taking an action together".

The people who comprise a group have no extra vote to give: if two friends and I form a group, a new vote allocated to the three of us doesn't magically materialize. By contrast, since there is no quota for speech per person, two friends and I can form a group (eg, an advocacy group) and tomorrow go down to Union Square (or buy airtime, or hand out pamphlets, or stand on a street corner) and engage in whatever legal speech we like, collectively. The claim is that if that group of people happens to be given the structure "corporation", that doesn't automatically allow for infringing on the rights of the people within the corporation to engage in legal speech.

Again, I'm making no statement as to whether I think this approach is wise or good for society or not, but it's astonishing how common it is to see people who completely don't know what they're talking about on this issue and yet are somehow super passionate about it.

Legal personhood is a concept that applies to ships, cities, states, and countries as well as human beings and corporations. It's a legal fiction that serves specific legal purposes; abandoning the entire concept because you don't think corporations should have the same set of rights as human beings is excessive because different types of legal persons already have different sets of legal rights.

>If they can't vote, are they really people?

If they aren't, then what exactly are felons and foreigners?

It’s a bad analogy. The better is because they don’t breath, don’t have a pulse, and don’t have human DNA, they are not really people, and should not be treated as such.

Tying the definition of personhood to voting is problematic. I agree that there should be some distinction between human beings and corporations. I don’t have an answer to what that distinction should be, but I don’t think voting is it.

> why shouldn't a corporation, effectively a person...

Why shouldn't a corporation, effectively a person, use the vast wealth at it's disposal to influence elections and steer government policy in the direction it wants?

Hmmm, perhaps we should rethink this whole corporations as persons thing.

Who should determine the will of this corporate-person? The shareholders? The board? The managing director? If I own a stake in an index fund, how do I propagate my will proportionately to the actions of these corporations? Corporate-persons is an area fraught with agent problems, and should therefore not be allowed.

If corporations were people, we'd call them people. Don't start an argument on a worthless premise.

I'd like that. 'Sucralose' is a brand intended to seem like a substance. It's neither a sugar nor an ose: it's C12H19Cl3O8 also known as (1→6)-Dichloro-(1→6)-dideoxy-β-D-fructofuranosyl-4-chloro-4-deoxy-α-D-galactopyranoside. If you burn it at over 662 degrees you get polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxin smoke, which makes sense considering that you make 'sucralose' by a chlorinating process.

I have some nasty reactions to the stuff and so did my late mother, who was a total skeptic to all crunchy-granola pure-foodery. I hate that they can brand a strange chemical like this with the names of natural sweeteners and then we're expected to call it by that name. Though I admit DichlorodideoxyβDfructofuranosyl4chloro4deoxyαDgalactopyranoside is much harder to say, and contains letters that aren't even letters at all.

Splenda is a brand. Sucralose is a substance. No TM, no brand any more than bananas is.

To add on top of that sucralose is a sugar, just one where 5 oxygen atoms are replaced by chlorine.

You missed Kraft Heinz.

Kraft became Mondelez.

Kraft split into two companies, one of which became Mondelez, the other (later) merged with Heinz and became Kraft Heinz.

I stand corrected. I wasn't aware of the Kraft Heinz merger.

and in usa, conagra

One or two companies own almost every widely-known beer as well.

That's a little bit tautological and a little bit misleading; tautological because widely-known beers have nationwide production and distribution and so of course they're produced by big companies, and misleading because unlike unlike self-care products like Axe and Dove, the different beer "brands" owned by major brewing firms tend to be run out of different breweries with different practices; they're different products, just with shared financing.

And, obviously, within any one local market, there will be far more better-known regional brands, often not owned by any big corporation.

Most have merged recently and are global. Give it ten years and bet you’ll find the breweries have consolidated somewhat.

That is the exact opposite of what has been happening in recent years. Bigger independent breweries get bought out but more smaller ones take their place.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/01/craft-b...

AB InBev has a 28% global market share for beer. Interestingly as beer consumption shifts towards craft beers they are buying up a lot of the more well known and successful ones.

They can't do it fast enough though, or at least I hope, to make a legitimate entry into the craft market. I think among people into craft beer it's well known that AB InBev owns Goose, Michelob, Shocktop, Corona, Stella, Modelo. Elysian is less-known as an AB-InBev brand but it's becoming more well known. They have to know that their business practices taints any brand that they buy out at this point, it's just a matter of milking popular high-quality brands as long as they can before public reception catches on

I think it's also important to understand that most of these companies are advertising companies first and foremost. Their business models revolve around the creation of demand for things that no rational society would want.

Why would anyone buy bottled water when it comes practically free from the tap? Why would anyone buy bread that has had all the tasty goodness removed ('white bread')? Why would anyone buy branded toothpaste when the chemically-identical supermarket version is half the price? Why would anyone want roasted grain coated in sugar as the first thing you eat each day? Would anyone buy sugary water (a.k.a. pop) if they knew just how bad sugar is for them? Why would anyone want hydrogenated vegetable oil instead of butter?

Unilever can go hang.

> Why would anyone buy bottled water

Some reasons: immediacy, taste, convenience, quality, lack of price sensitivity.

> Why would anyone buy [prepackaged white bread]

Texture, goes stale slower than fresh baked bread, sizing, taste, convenience.

> Why would anyone buy [brand toothpaste vs store-brand toothpaste]

Taste, familiarity, trust.

>> Why would anyone buy [brand toothpaste vs store-brand toothpaste]

> Taste, familiarity, trust.

That's the idea; familiarity and trust can be manufactured through advertising. You can become familiar with a brand name just by being exposed to it, and trust is harder but advertisers have it down to a science in some important ways.

There is more to trust than advertising. You also must produce a consistent product.

A colleague of mine purchases 12x 500ML bottles of Evian a week. That will be over 600 bottles of water in 2018, not including the bottled water he drinks at home.

Sure, bottled water tastes a little better than tap water, but I can’t help but cringe at the thought of 600 plastic bottles going into landfill. I avoid bottled water as much as possible, however when required I admit I do purchase 6 packs of 2L bottles for long road trips.

> Sure, bottled water tastes a little better than tap water

I guess it depends on where you live, but this is definitely not the case for me. And I live in a 111 year old building.

Old lead pipes apparently do make water taste sweeter...

I did this when I was in Thailand and thought it was completely insane and wasteful. It's shocking people do this because they don't like the taste of their tap water. Just purify it if you hate it that much? Also, the taste of any water pretty much disappears once you get used to it, so the thought of someone hating tap water is just absurd.

People do buy these things, so clearly there must be reasons for doing so. Point is, are they good reasons? And are they real reasons, or have they been put there by some big (and yes, evil) corporation?

The BBC did a wonderfully subversive 3-part documentary a few years ago called "The foods that make billions", which investigates in some depth the way people's tastes have been shaped to accept anything the food industry comes up with (no matter how disgusting in concept). Well worth tracking down on YouTube or whatever (particularly the episode about yoghurt, which I found grimly hilarious).

* Why would anyone want roasted grain coated in sugar as the first thing you eat each day?*

IKR? The tub of Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey is right there! And you don't have to pour the milk!

>Why would anyone buy bottled water when it comes practically free from the tap?

A question I often ask myself because the tap water in my house is literally the stuff they put in the bottles (mountain spring fresh etc). And yet the entire family drinks bottled water hauled at great carbon footprint via Costco, probably bottled in California which is 1200 miles away.

My best answer is that if I were to lay down the law and mandate everyone turn on the tap to get their water[1], I'd be viewed as the cook tinfoil hat Dad everyone hates.

How the water-industrial-complex arranged for that to be the state of play is a very intriguing question I think.

[1]Sometimes people prefer bottled water to tap only because they store the bottles in the fridge. Cold water to some people tastes better, but if you ran a blind test where you took their tap water, put it in bottles and chilled them, they can't tell the difference. This does not explain things in my house however because the bottles are kept at room temp.

> I'd be viewed as the cook tinfoil hat Dad everyone hates.

Maybe it's just a matter of rebranding yourself as the nature-loving, environmentally-conscious Dad who wants to keep the world plastic-free for your children :-)

> Why would anyone buy bottled water when it comes practically free from the tap?

You're in a place where tap water is not safe to drink and don't have a way to boil it. You live in a place where tap water is safe to drink, but tastes of sulfur. You're traveling and will want water in the next N hours. ...

It does not sound like you are answering in good faith. A more considerate — and basically obvious — interpretation of "when [water] comes free from the tap" is that the writer meant potable water.

Sure, there are many regions where potable water is difficult to attain, and there _are_ reasons to bottle water, but your contributions are disingenuously oblique.

I'm not even taking about places where potable water is not available. In North of Iceland you drink, eat, and bathe in sulfur favoured water. It's perfectly fine. But it's great to buy a bottled one from time to time.

How many people in the US live somewhere the tap water is unsafe. How many people on the US drink tap water. That second circle is much larger. So why do people drink bottled water?

> Why would anyone buy branded toothpaste when the chemically-identical supermarket version is half the price?

Doesn't really matter, they are both manufactured and sold by the same company, at the same facility. The difference is just to provide the illusion of choice (and the price difference is usually much smaller, just enough to trigger a response in a certain common kind of consumer.)

Some of the products do have reasons for existing, the brand versions might not be superior.

Bottled water: Because you don't always have a tap on hand and you don't always bring a water bottle from home. Some regions doesn't have water that can be consumed directly from the tap for sanitary reasons.

Hydrogenated vegetable oil: Because of lactose intolerance, and because liquid vegetable oil wouldn't be useful in the situation.