All-period “C” Day in Business Innovations was dedicated to learning about brand names. To learn more about the difference between name brands and store brands, the class took up the task of determining which grocery foods offered the best value. 

The class set off to Sobey’s in the morning and was tasked to find a product with a name brand and a store brand equivalent to compare. After purchasing an array of food products from pizza to canned fruit, the class invited other classes into our classroom for a blind taste test. Once we completed our taste test and gathered some data, we calculated how much you would save by buying the store brand. I found that one of the most interesting comparisons were the Compliments BBQ Chips compared to Lay’s BBQ Chips with a 27-10 vote in favour of Compliments and a savings of 37%. We used Piktochart to create a poster, graph our data and show our results. 

Even though everyone assumed the brand name products would taste better in about half the cases, they did not win in our taste test. It shows that brands can be very powerful in the minds of consumers and we are often willing to pay significantly more for just the brand name. 

By Luke Robins, grade 9 Business Student