Purpose The purpose of this study is to analyze the current scenario of private labels from consumers and retailers’ point of view and provide inputs to the retailers that will help them to increase their profitability. Profitability for retailers is a resultant of efficient inventory management in a limited space. This paper studies consumer’s purchase behavior and facilitates retailers in their decision-making of the dilemma between the appropriate mix of national brands (NBs) and private labels to increase their profitability. Retailers will be able to do cross-merchandising of the categories of the goods having strong associations and will increase the shelf space of the products, which are preferred by customers. Design/methodology/approach Market basket analysis was done for 1,223 transactions including two or more product categories in each transaction. In total, 564 products were studied and these products were further divided into 23 categories. Lift analysis was done 4 times to find an association between the products of all the categories. Findings The results find a strong association between some categories and advocate the placement of these combinations together – one being a NB and another private label. Research limitations/implications Analysis of only a limited set of brands and their product categories for a value retailer cross-merchandising. Originality/value The analysis of sales transactions will help retailers in determining the associations between product categories. This association will be helpful in placing their private labels vis-à-vis NBs to do cross-merchandising and allocating judicial space to the product assortment to increase their profitability.

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Along with its substantial part in business practices, brand equity is considered one of the significant concepts in academic world too. Creating and managing brand equity has been accentuated as an essential task for most of the firms. With Indian sportswear segment tramping its way in an upward movement, presence of number of national and multinational brands are seen contending for customer's attention and market share. This paper looks into the most eminent drivers of brand equity, from a customer-based point of view, in the Indian sportswear market. We present an approach based on linear programming (LP) generated within the framework of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Sportswear industry offers products that provide more intangible value to its users than tangible characteristics, the proposed approach is chosen. Since it allows for pair wise comparison between non-directly measurable criteria, providing ranks to the intangible drivers of the brand equity. Data was collected by interviewing consumers as the customers are considered to be the experts when it comes to their purchase decision. The analysis also furnishes a global ranking for four sportswear brands: Nike, Reebok,

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