---
title: "\"3.9 Yuan, 6.8 Yuan, 9.9 Yuan\" – Don't Price Your Private Label Arbitrarily!"
description: "Private label products are booming, but many retailers are pricing them without a clear strategy, leading to confusion and missed opportunities. This article analyzes common pricing pitfalls and introduces the GOOD-BETTER-BEST framework, along with five actionable rules for building a coherent private label pricing architecture."
author: "薛文发"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2026-05-14"
categories: "Brand Marketing, Retail Formats"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/1MZdMT6WxMI_lqhrnIAPIw"
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citation: "薛文发. “\"3.9 Yuan, 6.8 Yuan, 9.9 Yuan\" – Don't Price Your Private Label Arbitrarily!.” New Distribution, 2026-05-14. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/3-9-yuan-6-8-yuan-9-9-yuan-don-t-price-your-private-label-arbitrarily-3c4602bf/"
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---

# "3.9 Yuan, 6.8 Yuan, 9.9 Yuan" – Don't Price Your Private Label Arbitrarily!

> Private label products are booming, but many retailers are pricing them without a clear strategy, leading to confusion and missed opportunities. This article analyzes common pricing pitfalls and introduces the GOOD-BETTER-BEST framework, along with five actionable rules for building a coherent private label pricing architecture.

Private label products have been really hot in the past two years. From Pangdonglai to Sam's Club, from ALDI to Yonghui, almost every leading retailer is shouting "we're doing private label."
But despite the buzz, when you actually open the shelves and look closely, there are many problems. The most typical and most overlooked one is pricing.
If pricing is done poorly, even the best product strength can't hold up. Today, let's talk about this.
# Seemingly Lively, Actually Chaotic:
# A Real Snapshot of Current Private Label Pricing
Let me first tell you about a scene I saw in a regional supermarket not long ago.
On the shelf, there were three SKUs of private label tissue in the same category: one at 3.9 yuan, one at 6.8 yuan, and one at 9.9 yuan. The packaging styles were all different, the specifications were staggered, and the slogans were each more catchy than the last – "Budget Choice," "Premium Selection," "Quality Excellence."
It sounds like the tiers are clear. But from the consumer's perspective, take a look:
What exactly is the difference?
Is it the gram weight?
The number of plies?
The craftsmanship?
Or just the packaging color?
There's no label that lets consumers tell at a glance.
This is not an isolated case; it's the current state of private label pricing.
I've summarized it into three typical problems:
The first is "lack of price planning and positioning."
When doing private label, there's no clear category planning or positioning, let alone price band planning. They just pick whichever supplier offers a suitable price. As a result, under one category, there are three to five private label SKUs with prices high and low, positioning vague, consumers can't choose, and even the procurement staff can't say which one is the main product.
The second is "low-price dependency."
When it comes to private label, they only know how to do low prices. Being 20%-30% cheaper than national brands in the same category is what many retailers think "private label" is all about.
In the short term, it can boost sales, but in the long run, it cheapens the brand. Consumers see your logo and think "this is a cheap product," completely sealing off the high-margin potential of private label.
The third is "random jumping between high and low."
This is the most common. Snacks are low-priced, personal care is high-end, fresh produce is mid-range, but there's no brand narrative to tie them together. Consumers simply can't figure out what your private label actually stands for.
These three problems are essentially the same thing: no pricing plan and architecture.
Industry data is already giving us hints.
From 2022 to 2025, the average number of new private label products developed by each retailer per year increased from 83 to 180, clearly accelerating. But the more you develop, the more complex the SKUs, the greater the cost of not having a pricing architecture – resources are scattered, investment is diluted, consumers are confused, and your own team gets more and more lost.
# The Way Out for Pricing:
# The GOOD-BETTER-BEST Three-Tier Structure
Back to the old question: how should private label actually be priced?
Here I want to introduce a framework that has been validated by international retailers for decades – GOOD-BETTER-BEST.
In one sentence: private label should not have just one price band, but rather a layered product matrix.
  * GOOD (basic line): Anchored in essential needs, solving the "is it available" problem. Low price, high volume, high frequency.
  * BETTER (main line): Anchored in the mainstream population, solving the "value for money" problem. Mid-price, quality benchmarked against mainstream brands, the sales and image backbone of the company.
  * BEST (premium line): Anchored in quality seekers, solving the "is it good" problem. High price, differentiated, profit driver, brand image enhancer.
The logic of this three-tier structure is very simple: consumers are naturally segmented, so pricing should be segmented.
Internationally, this structure has long been proven. Tesco's classic "Tesco Everyday Value – Tesco – Tesco Finest" three lines have remained unchanged for decades. Albert Heijn has "AH Basic – AH – AH Excellent."
The fact that this three-tier architecture has operated stably for so many years itself shows that it conforms to the underlying logic of retail merchandise organization.
Domestically, the most systematic one is China Resources Vanguard. It has built a complete matrix, including the "Jiaxuan" series in the value line, the "Runjia" series in the local specialty line, the "Simple Combination" series in the minimalist line, the "Olé Everyday" and "Olé Original" in the quality line, and the "Olé Leading" in the ultimate line.
This is a typical Chinese-style extension of GOOD-BETTER-BEST: the same retailer, targeting different people and different scenarios, builds several clear price ladders.
Compared with some peers that only do a single price band, the gap is obvious: excellent retailers have systematized their private label, while directionless ones are still stuck at "collecting SKUs."
# How to Implement the Three Lines?
# Design, Display, Promotion, and Role Must All Be Separated
Theory is easy, but implementation is hard. To truly execute GOOD-BETTER-BEST, each tier must be clearly differentiated across four dimensions.
GOOD Line: Basic Guarantee Type
Core role: traffic driver, traffic generator, weapon against hard discounters.
Design: simple packaging, direct information, no emphasis on brand premium. For example, Tesco's Everyday Value packaging is deliberately made "plain" so consumers can instantly recognize it as the budget line.
Display: usually placed on end caps, stack bases, or entrance traffic paths, showing the presence of "hard currency."
Promotion: mainly stable low prices, few big promotions. Everyday low price is its promotion.
Typical example: ALDI's "multiples of 5" value line at 5, 10, 20, and 35 yuan – 5-yuan sanitary pads, 10-yuan liquor, 20-yuan bath towels, 35-yuan laundry detergent beads. The price point itself is the selling point.
BETTER Line: Mainstream Value-for-Money Type
Core role: sales driver, profit driver, the "bread and butter" of private label.
Design: packaging must have brand recognition, with unified colors, fonts, and visual systems, and clearly convey the selling point of "as good as big brands."
Display: on the main shelf, displayed side-by-side with national brands for direct comparison, letting consumers see the price difference at a glance.
Promotion: seasonal big promotions plus cross-promotions, creating the perception of "high quality at a fair price."
Typical example: Most of Sam's Club Member's Mark products fall into this tier. MM's bamboo tissue is priced at less than 2.3 yuan per roll, lower than the 2.8 yuan of leading well-known brands, but the quality is clearly higher than competitors at the same price. This is the benchmark play for the BETTER line: quality higher than the same price, price lower than the same quality.
BEST Line: Differentiated Premium Type
Core role: brand image driver, profit amplifier, source of repeat purchase stickiness.
Design: premium packaging, refined materials, can have an independent brand name (or even downplay the parent brand logo to avoid low-price associations).
Display: dedicated counters, independent display islands, with separate lighting and materials to create a "premium zone" atmosphere.
Promotion: almost never discounts, relying on quality stories, origin stories, and craftsmanship stories.
Typical example: Pangdonglai's DL series bestsellers. DL juice, DL craft wheat beer, DL oatmeal – among them, DL craft beer has cumulative sales exceeding 100 million yuan. It's not sold by being cheap, but by differentiated product strength. That's what the BEST line should look like.
Turn these four dimensions into a table. Every time you develop a private label SKU, first ask yourself: does it belong to GOOD, BETTER, or BEST? If you can't answer, don't launch it yet.
# What Do the Benchmarks Do?
# Give Execution a Reusable Standard
Principles alone are not enough; implementation needs standards. Drawing on the practices of international and domestic benchmarks, I've put together a set of executable "Five Rules for Private Label Pricing":
Rule 1: Price Band Positioning Rule
  * GOOD line = 60%-70% of the mainstream price of national brands in the same category
  * BETTER line = 80%-90% of the mainstream price of national brands in the same category
  * BEST line = 100%-130% of the mainstream price of national brands in the same category (some sub-categories can be higher)
These numbers are not made up; they are reasonable ranges refined through repeated adjustment with category gross margins and consumer price sensitivity. The above planning is for reference only; differences exist across regions, formats, and categories, so don't copy mechanically.
Rule 2: Quality Grade Matching Rule
If pricing is divided into three tiers, quality standards must also be divided into three tiers. The GOOD line corresponds to "qualified and sufficient," the BETTER line to "mainstream big-brand quality," and the BEST line to "surpassing big brands."
If quality grades and price grades are misaligned, the whole system collapses – for example, if GOOD line quality is the same as BETTER, consumers will cross-tier and take advantage; if BEST line quality is the same as BETTER, consumers will think the high-price line is a tax on intelligence.
Rule 3: SKU Quantity Ratio Rule
  * GOOD line: 20%-30% of total SKUs
  * BETTER line: 50%-60% of total SKUs (main force)
  * BEST line: 15%-25% of total SKUs
Why is BETTER the main force? Because it corresponds to the thickest waist of the consumer market, the best balance point between sales volume and gross profit.
Not all retailers have the capability to do a BEST line. If the retailer's brand equity cannot support the premiumization of private label, absolutely do not do a BEST line; otherwise, long-term slow sales and high shrinkage rates will be the entry-level tuition.
Rule 4: Brand Recognition Rule
The three lines must be visually identifiable within 3 seconds. You can share the parent brand logo but use different color schemes, or use completely independent sub-brand names (like Tesco Finest). Ambiguity is failure.
Rule 5: Iteration and Elimination Rule
Each line should do a category sales ranking every year, with the bottom 20% forced to be replaced. The vitality of private label comes not from "launching more," but from "launching accurately and exiting quickly."
These five rules look simple, but when implemented, they can filter out 80% of the chaos.
# Back to the Origin:
# Pricing Is Not a Technique, It's a Strategy
Writing this, let's look back at the question from the beginning – is your private label pricing reasonable?
It's not a technical question; it's a strategic one.
  * Reasonable pricing means: you've thought clearly about who the private label serves, what role it plays in the retailer's overall merchandise system, and what story you want to tell consumers.
  * Unreasonable pricing means: you're just "making SKUs," not "building a brand."
The industry trend is already clear. The average share of private label in Chinese retail supermarkets is less than 5%, while in Europe it's 38.7% and in the US it's 20.7%.
Nationwide, private label sales in supermarket chains have exceeded 380 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17%, far outpacing the growth of traditional brand products. This means that in the next 3-5 years, private label is destined to become the core battleground determining the survival of retailers.
But whether this battle can be won depends not on who launches faster, but on who launches more accurately and whose system is more stable. GOOD-BETTER-BEST is not a master key, but at least it's a scale – it lets you ask yourself before every development decision: What is the positioning of this SKU? Is it worth this price? Should it be worth this price? Does it conform to the price positioning strategy?
Finally, let me say something from the heart.
Private label has reached the stage where it's no longer about "whether it exists," but about "whether it's good."
At this stage, pricing is no longer just filling in a number; it's a "systematic project" that integrates private label development, operations, and promotion.
In the next three years, we will see a group of leading retailers truly establish their own private label pricing systems – they will win; while those still pricing arbitrarily and developing chaotically will fall behind one by one.
Pricing determines life and death. I hope this article can help you see clearly the chess game in your hands.
(About 3,050 words. Data in the article is compiled from NielsenIQ, China Chain Store & Franchise Association, and public industry sources.)
Xue Wenfa, Deputy General Manager of Guangdong Yinxue Group and senior private label expert, has spent 20 years focusing on injecting "value differentiation genes" into brands. He has participated in the brand reshaping of Nongfu Spring, led the youth-oriented transformation of Zhujiang Beer, and built the Meiyijia self-owned ecosystem. He is currently responsible for Yinxue's OEM/ODM and product innovation, committed to building category innovation and value differentiation systems for private label.
As retailers increasingly emphasize product strength and demand differentiated supply, co-branded exclusive supply, channel-exclusive supply, and channel customization are becoming new cooperation models between brand owners and retailers. This is not a zero-sum game, but an opportunity for re-division of labor.
Therefore, around these cooperation models, on June 4-5, 2026, we will hold a China Private Label Industry Chain Conference in Hangzhou. It will not only discuss how retailers do private label, but also cover the exploration and implementation of multiple cooperation models between brand owners and retailers. The event will bring together 200+ retail buyers from various formats and regions, as well as brand owners and factories, for precise supply-demand matching.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 薛文发
- Published: 2026-05-14
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/3-9-yuan-6-8-yuan-9-9-yuan-don-t-price-your-private-label-arbitrarily-3c4602bf/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/1MZdMT6WxMI_lqhrnIAPIw

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