Branded v Generic Products

In my recent effort to earn funds for my new computer, I have been part taking in some market research focus groups (and it's not low level porn) and the last 2 have been about supermarkets improving their packaging to entice purchases to their generic products or what we call here, "home brand" - the brand with the same name as the store.

Even before becoming a single income family, we happily used generic products, I never really felt that they had huge differences in quality, yes some things do, but in general, the quality is closely equal. Even wikipedia tends to agrees with me "Generic brand products are often of equal quality as a branded product, however, the quality may change suddenly in either direction with no change in the packaging if the supplier for the product changes." And so I thought that the general population was like me, some products are great branded, like chocolate, but in general the staples, like flour, block butter etc was just as good in the generic products, but now after these focus groups, I feel I'm sort of alone.

The feeling I got was that people prefer branded products and only use generic for non food items, like foil, paper bags etc, so it made me feel a little cheap or very money conscious, not just a budgeter but a miser...well who cares, because look what I make with generic products:


And there is never even a crumb left, so it can't be all that bad...or I wonder how great it would be with branded products?