Private Brand Momentum in an Omnichannel Shopping Environment

Private brand growth is real, and grocery retailers who build a strong digital presence will have an edge.

By: Tom Cosgrove, Director of Industry Relations, FMI

Private brands have crossed a threshold. They're no longer riding the wave of retail growth — they're driving it. And as shopping increasingly shifts online, how private brands show up on the digital shelf is becoming just as important as what's on the physical one. For retailers, that’s both a challenge and a significant opportunity. 

The data makes this clear. This year, we partnered with NielsenIQ and Think Blue’s Parag Shah to refresh our report, Private Brands at the Digital Crossroads 2026: A Call to Lead in Omnichannel Grocery Retail, which we recently presented at the PLMA Leadership Conference in Bentonville, Ark. Here are some of the key takeaways from these findings:

• Private brand is a volume growth story: +1.1 percent unit growth vs. +0.6 percent for national brands.
• Shoppers are actively leaning in: 49 percent are buying more private brands than ever, and more than 70 percent see it as good-value.
• Online is where the action is: both private and national brands are seeing around a 19 percent online dollar growth, while in-store units soften.
• Digital shelf execution is a differentiator: assortment share does not guarantee search visibility.
• Private brands truly are brands: retailers must treat their private brands as a brand by elevating them to a strategic growth opportunity, continue to lead with insight and build a strong digital presence.

The story these findings tell is hard to ignore. Private brand growth is real, accelerating and increasingly driven online. That means visibility, content quality and discoverability aren't nice-to-haves — they're the battleground.

There's also a loyalty dimension here that deserves attention. Private brands have always driven value perception, but the digital shelf is now where purchase decisions are influenced and long-term loyalty is earned. Retailers who invest in that experience will have a meaningful edge.

None of this happens in a silo. Winning on the digital shelf requires deliberate collaboration between trading partners and cross-functional alignment within the retail organization itself. Merchandising, marketing, ecommerce and supply chain teams all need to be working from the same playbook — one that explicitly includes private brands in the digital strategy, not as an afterthought, but as a core growth driver. When supplier partners and internal teams are aligned on goals, content standards and shelf priorities, private brands are far better positioned to compete and win online.

Read Private Brands at the Digital Crossroads 2026