We’ve all done it. Wandered through a busy supermarket and stared at shelf after shelf of brightly coloured packaging, staring at the faces of models who may or not resemble our own, wondering which one to reach out to and buy. It can even be bewildering. On a local pharmacy shelf near this office, one brand had more than seven different varieties of aerosol deodorant. Ultra, Sport, 24-Hour Protecting, Micro-Bacterial and more. Who knew sweat had become so specialized?

Add in competing brands and products and that can swiftly rise to hundreds. In Malaysian hypermarkets it’s largely survivable but in the enormous warehouse style stores common in the States and Europe it can be overwhelming. But all may not be as it seems: thanks to mergers, acquisitions and good old market-soaking strategies many of those brands turn out to be owned by the same companies.

A quick stroll through the aisles will tell you how many brands are owned by the same company. Take global food giant Kraft, as an example: there’s Cheezels, Chachos and the Twisties sub-brands in the snack section. Oreo and Chips More go head to head as cookies. And for many of us, both Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Kraft Singles are sandwich staples. It’s a similar story with Nestle. In their breakfast cereal portfolio alone there’s Cheerios, Corn Flakes, Fitnesse, Clusters, Koko Krunch and Cookie Crisp. Then there’s all those yummy chocolate bars: Kit Kat, Smarties, Milky Bar, Nestle Crunch.

And this is just in Malaysia. In larger markets like the US it’s not unusual for these companies to have what appear to be dozens of competing brands jockeying for shelf space and occupying every niche and price point. While no one is alleging anything underhand or dishonest, and most of the products will feature a fairly prominent logo to alert you to the relationship, it’s interesting to think that our ‘either or’ purchase choices contribute to the same bottom line.

As this is a short article (it was intended originally as a sidebar to the Brand of Brothers piece for New Man magazine), here’s a completely unrelated but fun supermarket dominos link.