Kirkland: Costco Branding Strategy

The brand I chose for this assignment is Kirkland. Kirkland is a store brand of Costco. The Costco branding strategy is to maintain a great reputation for customer service, price, and to sell quality products. Therefore, Kirkland products satisfy the expectation and ideal for the product performance that leads to customer satisfaction (Chou, Y. (2010). Kirkland is a prime example for leveraging brand extension. Costco places the Kirkland brand on most of their store brand products. Their strategy for collaborating with the top selling product manufacturers provides credibility to the manufacturer by being associated with Costco. Furthermore, both the manufacturer and Costco benefit by co-branding the products. Geographic benefits to the …show more content…
The subtle yet effective packaging helps save costs while promoting the Kirkland brand. In my opinion their new beer is aimed to compete with the light domestic beers such as Bud Light and Coors light. The target market demographic is for younger beer drinkers or the beer drinkers who are on a budget. This would include college kids and young adults in their twenties. Kirkland already introduced a high-end craft beer product a couple years ago but with the average age of consumers, drinking beer in the US being 38 and the weekly income is $738.00 (Lopez & Matschke, 2012), Kirkland needed to have a lower priced solution on their shelves. Kirkland light beer is 30% cheaper than the other leading light beers in Costco. Although the flavor is not as good in my opinion, the cost savings justifies the difference. I purchased the beer because I was curious and thought the beer had to be decent if it was carrying the Kirkland label. My reason for purchasing the Kirkland Light Beer, was the solely the Kirkland labeling and packaging, thus being a prime example of brand loyalty resulting in consumer