7 ms·

There are only a few companies that own nearly all brands you can find in a typical first world supermarket. Not much more than these few: Procter&Gamble, Unile

by tda 9y ago

There are only a few companies that own nearly all brands you can find in a typical first world supermarket. Not much more than these few: Procter&Gamble, Unilever, Mars, Mondelez, Goodman Fielder, Nestle

toyg 9y ago
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.
- 45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
  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.
  - cstoner 9y ago
    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?
    - grzm 9y ago
      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.
    - hueving 9y ago
      >If they can't vote, are they really people? If they aren't, then what exactly are felons and foreigners?
      - prklmn 9y ago
        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.
    - wutbrodo 9y ago
      > 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.
      - mike741 9y ago
        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)
        jjeaff 9y ago
        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.
        lotharbot 9y ago
        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."
    - philwelch 9y ago
      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.
  - pdx 9y ago
    > 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.
  - rlkf 9y ago
    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.
  - Retra 9y ago
    If corporations were people, we'd call them people. Don't start an argument on a worthless premise.
- losteric 9y ago
  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...
  - hueving 9y ago
    Restricting what brand names people can use is anything but "pro-free-market".
    - rfrey 9y ago
      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.
      - underdown 9y ago
        Calling a newly proposed regulation "pro free market" legislation is a little orwellian.
        swsieber 9y ago
        Okay. How about pro-efficient markets? Because certainly markets completely unrestrained leads to rent seeking.
        losteric 9y ago
        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.
        9y ago
- fleitz 9y ago
  North Korea is always looking for defectors if you want to live in a place that forbids the use of brands. No pesky bottled water, or other consumer goods either.
- Applejinx 9y ago
  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.
  - prepend 9y ago
    Splenda is a brand. Sucralose is a substance. No TM, no brand any more than bananas is.
    - refurb 9y ago
      To add on top of that sucralose is a sugar, just one where 5 oxygen atoms are replaced by chlorine.
- philwelch 9y ago
  You'd think so, but Nestle already does this of their own free will and they don't really seem to suffer for it.
adwhit 9y ago
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.
- niftich 9y ago
  > 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.
  - ilovecars2 9y ago
    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.
    - wutbrodo 9y ago
      > 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.
      - 9y ago
dragonwriter 9y ago
You missed Kraft Heinz.
- cat199 9y ago
  and in usa, conagra
- danlindley 9y ago
  Kraft became Mondelez.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    Kraft split into two companies, one of which became Mondelez, the other (later) merged with Heinz and became Kraft Heinz.
    - danlindley 9y ago
      I stand corrected. I wasn't aware of the Kraft Heinz merger.
InclinedPlane 9y ago
http://pop-online.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/food-brand-map-large-retail-pos-point-of-sale.jpg http://pop-online.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/food-brand-...
- mehrdadn 9y ago
  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.).
- spartas 9y ago
  Here's a older brand map that also includes the non-food products: https://crueltyfreeblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/foodmap.jpg https://crueltyfreeblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/foodmap....
thelittleone 9y ago
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.
- goda90 9y ago
  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.
  - cat199 9y ago
    and the rest of the grocery stores are probably safeway..
  - eropple 9y ago
    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.
  - henrikschroder 9y ago
    > 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.
    - dredmorbius 9y ago
mixmastamyk 9y ago
One or two companies own almost every widely-known beer as well.
- tptacek 9y ago
  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.
  - mixmastamyk 9y ago
    Most have merged recently and are global. Give it ten years and bet you’ll find the breweries have consolidated somewhat.
    - deadmetheny 9y ago
      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-beer-industry/550850/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/01/craft-b...
- robryan 9y ago
  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.
  - opportune 9y ago
    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

by tda 9y ago

toyg 9y ago

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.

45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
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.
- cstoner 9y ago
  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?
  - grzm 9y ago
    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.
  - hueving 9y ago
    >If they can't vote, are they really people? If they aren't, then what exactly are felons and foreigners?
    - prklmn 9y ago
      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.
  - wutbrodo 9y ago
    > 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.
    - mike741 9y ago
      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)
      - jjeaff 9y ago
        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.
        lotharbot 9y ago
        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."
  - philwelch 9y ago
    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.
- pdx 9y ago
  > 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.
- rlkf 9y ago
  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.
- Retra 9y ago
  If corporations were people, we'd call them people. Don't start an argument on a worthless premise.
losteric 9y ago
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...
- hueving 9y ago
  Restricting what brand names people can use is anything but "pro-free-market".
  - rfrey 9y ago
    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.
    - underdown 9y ago
      Calling a newly proposed regulation "pro free market" legislation is a little orwellian.
      - swsieber 9y ago
        Okay. How about pro-efficient markets? Because certainly markets completely unrestrained leads to rent seeking.
      - losteric 9y ago
        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.
      - 9y ago
fleitz 9y ago
North Korea is always looking for defectors if you want to live in a place that forbids the use of brands. No pesky bottled water, or other consumer goods either.
Applejinx 9y ago
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.
- prepend 9y ago
  Splenda is a brand. Sucralose is a substance. No TM, no brand any more than bananas is.
  - refurb 9y ago
    To add on top of that sucralose is a sugar, just one where 5 oxygen atoms are replaced by chlorine.
philwelch 9y ago
You'd think so, but Nestle already does this of their own free will and they don't really seem to suffer for it.

adwhit 9y ago

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.

niftich 9y ago
> 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.
- ilovecars2 9y ago
  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.
  - wutbrodo 9y ago
    > 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.
    - 9y ago

dragonwriter 9y ago

You missed Kraft Heinz.

cat199 9y ago
and in usa, conagra
danlindley 9y ago
Kraft became Mondelez.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Kraft split into two companies, one of which became Mondelez, the other (later) merged with Heinz and became Kraft Heinz.
  - danlindley 9y ago
    I stand corrected. I wasn't aware of the Kraft Heinz merger.

InclinedPlane 9y ago

http://pop-online.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/food-brand-map-large-retail-pos-point-of-sale.jpg http://pop-online.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/food-brand-...

mehrdadn 9y ago
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.).
spartas 9y ago
Here's a older brand map that also includes the non-food products: https://crueltyfreeblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/foodmap.jpg https://crueltyfreeblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/foodmap....

thelittleone 9y ago

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.

goda90 9y ago
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.
- cat199 9y ago
  and the rest of the grocery stores are probably safeway..
- eropple 9y ago
  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.
- henrikschroder 9y ago
  > 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.
  - dredmorbius 9y ago

mixmastamyk 9y ago

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

tptacek 9y ago
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.
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  Most have merged recently and are global. Give it ten years and bet you’ll find the breweries have consolidated somewhat.
  - deadmetheny 9y ago
    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-beer-industry/550850/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/01/craft-b...
robryan 9y ago
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.
- opportune 9y ago
  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