4.2.3. Price

The lower cost of PLs in relation to BLs reported in the current study corroborates with the 2003 NZ study that found lower mean price for 11 of 15 supermarket PL food categories examined (in relation to BL) [18]. A study looking at the cost of healthy and usual diets in NZ in 2015 found considerable savings (5.5%) if households purchased PL versions of brands compared to branded items [37,38]. Findings of our study are also similar to those reported in several other countries internationally, where, overall, supermarket PL products were lower priced in relation to BL options [31–33,39,40].

## *4.3. Findings in Relation to the Commitments Made by NZ Supermarkets*

In our study, we did not evaluate separately how each of the two supermarket retailers met their commitments made in 2016, because there were insufficient PL products for most food categories assessed to provide robust comparisons. Thus, comparisons made include PL FCs of both NZ supermarket retailers combined. As previously described, both NZ supermarket retailers committed to displaying HSR on almost all PL products by 2018– 2020 [13–15]. The findings of our study confirm that this commitment is, overall, on track, as among the food categories examined, the majority of PL products (92.4%) were displaying HSR on the package in 2019. However, further effort to increase HSR uptake in some PL food categories is still required, e.g., cereal bars, sausages and hotdogs and raw or frozen meats with flavour/coating.

Both supermarket retailers committed to improving the nutrition of their PL products. Our study found that in 2019, most PL food categories were of a similar nutritional quality to BL categories. In 2019, overall, a higher proportion of PL products had an HSR ≥ 3.5 in relation BL products (43.5% vs. 38.5%), and for 10 PL food categories the proportion of products with an HSR ≥ 3.5 was >50%. We found from 2015 to 2019 that only three PL food categories and two PL food categories changed, respectively, the mean sodium and sugar contents (with average reduction > 10%). Together, these findings indicate that the commitments of supermarkets retailers have been partially met, but more work is needed to increase the proportion of products with HSR ≥ 3.5 across all types of foods.

There are no public commitments made by the NZ supermarket retailers on price of PL products [11,13–15]. We believe that this is probably because PL products are usually considered lower cost options than branded products, and price is generally considered commercially sensitive. In our study, overall, PL products had a lower mean price than BL products, which indicates that, on average, PL products represent better value for money than BL options.
