“I’d like to, but I can’t”. Store Brands’ limited exploitation of the Gluten-Free opportunity

Over recent years, Free-From food products have shown a significant increase in consumption internationally. Retailers from the Modern Grocery Distribution (MGD) are taking advantage of this positive trend by extending their assortment in the area, thus benefitting remarkably in terms of sales and margins. The present work is focused on the Gluten-Free segment; through an analysis of Italian IRI sell-out data from 2014 to 2019, our results show a considerably positive sales increase, albeit slightly diminishing during the last two years. However, Store Brands (SBs) are only partially exploiting this opportunity since their contribution to the overall turnover of Gluten-Free products has been limited; this is mainly due to a lack in assortment depth.