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Is Your Store Brand Ready for a Digital World?

Unique Product Identification Standards for an E-Commerce World

Store Brand: Identified by Standards

There has been a constant flurry of news of retailers announcing new and enhanced store brands – retailers are seeing store brands as their secret weapon to differentiate themselves from the competition by providing consumers with unique experiences and product offerings that drive consumer loyalty and as their strategy for growth.

Traditional Store Brand Product Identification Doesn’t Work Well Online

Store-Brand Identification Method

Before e-commerce and omni-channel retail, store brands sold by individual retailers were limited to the four walls of their own stores. These products were labeled with internal proprietary identifiers whose sole purpose was to support price lookups.

Today’s consumers are digital consumers, and they are shopping and buying when, where, and how they want. With the advent of the internet, closed loop numbering systems are no longer adequate to meet the search and discovery needs of consumers. Since the numbers are not unique, they create two distinct types of problems—too little or too much information.

Store-Brand Label Product Identification Impacts Consumer Search

Store-Brand Label Product Identification Impacts Consumer Search

Research shows that 94 percent* of consumers will either abandon a website or just give up on the online shopping experience altogether if they can’t find the information they are looking … accurate and consistent product content is a critical factor to making a purchase decision (clicking “Buy”).

To get a baseline and understand the current store brand product identification landscape, GS1 US reviewed the top 100 U.S. Retailer store brand practices. Watch the on-demand webinar and read the published study to learn the findings.

Using GS1 Standards to properly identify store brands is critical for sellers to broaden their access to more marketplaces and for consumers to be able to search, discover and purchase your products. Here are 3 easy steps to help you get started. This checklist is for retailers and brand owners, who are responsible for assigning the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN®) hierarchy, using their organization’s licensed GS1 Company Prefix.


The value proposition is clear—as physical commerce moves online—unique product identification becomes key to search, discovery and purchase decisions. “If a consumer can’t find it, they can’t buy it!”

Learn more with these GS1 US Resources

To stay informed of future GS1 US product identification updates, provide your contacts details below.