The "Trade Dress" Controversy: A Case of Strategic Cross-Brand Cannibalization

National and private brands have been waging a war for at least the last seventy-five years to gain customer acceptance and loyalty. The stability of the branding environment has been brought into question by recent copycat private branding strategies by major food chains. The look-a-like "trade dress" uses all the visual cues, i.e., shape, size, color and the like, of the established national brand to attract consumers' attention while in the shopping environment. Retailers are using a cross-brand cannibalization strategy which sells the look-a-like private label off of the retail traffic of the nationally branded products. This paper examines the current legal environment and the resulting opportunity for retailers to use the cross-brand cannibalization strategy. A case history of three retailers using variations of copycat branding are presented to illustrate the impact of such strategies.