What a simple question taught us about brand-name loyalty

We get asked sometimes how decisions get made at Coupons.com. How do we pick which retailers to feature? How do we know which categories to write about? How do we figure out what people actually want to save on? There are a few answers to these questions, but the one that is most exciting is that it’s feedback directly from our shoppers. 

For example, a few days ago, our team posted a short question on the Coupons.com Facebook page. No flashy graphic, no big announcement. Just one line over a blue gradient background. What grocery item do you always buy the brand-name version of?

We received hundreds of comments, and it’s information that we love to get. Not only is it fun to see how we align with our users, but it also teaches us about what we can do to better serve you and what direction we should go in. So we wanted to walk through what happened after we hit publish, and what it shows about how the team here thinks.

Why we ask questions like this

Our content team has always treated audience input as part of our research process, not separate from it. We track shopping trends, monitor coupon performance, and read industry reports, but none of that replaces hearing directly from the people in our community.

For this question in particular, brand-name loyalty was on our minds because the data has been telling an interesting story. Store brands have been gaining ground for years, and 2025 set another record. According to figures released by the Private Label Manufacturers Association, US shoppers spent about $282.8 billion on store-brand products last year, growing roughly three times faster than national brands. An eMarketer-cited report also found that around 80% of consumers now say store brands are just as good as or better than the name-brand version.

That trend is real. But trends never tell the whole story, and you can’t get the full story without talking directly to people like you. With these studies in mind, we wanted the other side of the story. We wanted to know which specific products still pull people back to the big-name aisle, no matter what the math says. So we asked.

The answers, ranked

The comments started rolling in, and certain categories showed up over and over. Here is what our community would not swap, ranked roughly by how often each one came up.

1. Mayonnaise. This was the runaway winner. Hellmann's (or Best Foods, west of the Rockies) was mentioned most often, with Duke's a strong southern second. Miracle Whip had its own loyal following, and a handful of Kewpie fans showed up, too. Almost no one was open to a store-brand mayo. As Lamiel commented on our post, "Hellmann's always."

2. Ketchup. Heinz dominated. A few Hunts loyalists held the line, but the consensus was clear. Ketchup is one of the few condiments most shoppers will not compromise on.

3. Peanut butter. Jif was the most-mentioned name, with Skippy and Peter Pan close behind. Erin made a useful point in her reply. She picks Jif Natural Creamy because it is one of the lower-sugar no-stir options that still tastes good (in her opinion), which lines up with how a lot of label-readers actually shop.

4. Dawn dish soap. The most-mentioned cleaning product in the thread. Several commenters pointed out that its concentration made it last longer, so a higher price per bottle still worked out in their favor. This kind of math matters to your grocery bill, and it was good to see readers running it themselves.

5. Coffee. Less of a single-brand pile-on and more of a personal loyalty thing. Maxwell House, Folgers, Eight O'Clock, Chock full o' Nuts, and Community all had defenders. Joyce shared that her family has been on Eight O'Clock for generations, and that she remembers taking the bag to the cash register as a kid to have it ground in the store. Coffee is something people pick young and stick with.

6. Tide laundry detergent. Tide showed up across dozens of replies. A few commenters mentioned scent sensitivities steering them to specific formulas, which is a common reason brand loyalty sticks even when prices climb.

7. Kraft mac and cheese. Specific, nostalgic, and apparently impossible to replicate. Several shoppers said generic versions just did not taste right.

8. Cereal. Cheerios led the way, but the bigger pattern was that brand loyalty depended on the type of cereal. A handful of shoppers said they were happy to take store-brand options in most cases but drew the line at specific ones like Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Pop-Tarts.

9. Toilet paper. Charmin, Scott, Cottonelle, Quilted Northern, and Angel Soft all came up. Roy summed up the through-line in four words. "Quilted Northern, I'm sensitive." Comfort beats price in this category.

10. Hidden Valley Ranch. A smaller cluster, but a passionate one. Including, full disclosure, one of our own team members, who could not resist jumping into the comments to declare it the GOAT. Brand loyalty is contagious around here, too.

The replies that stood out

A few comments earned their own callout.

Warren went straight to the point with "Texas Pete hot sauce." Hot sauce is a category packed with cheaper store-brand options, but loyalty to a particular bottle usually has nothing to do with price. It has to do with what someone grew up eating, what shows up at family cookouts, and what flavor profile feels like home.

Jennifer dropped in with the reply that made the whole content team laugh. "The ones with the coupons." Fourteen people reacted to it within the day, more than almost any other comment on the post. In five words, she captured how a real shopper thinks. Sometimes, despite brand preferences or long-term loyalty, choices ultimately are shaped by which company is actively giving someone a reason to keep coming back.

Linda was honest in a way that felt like 2026 in a single sentence. She wrote that Bounty paper towels used to be her always-buy, but the current economy ended that habit. That comment alone told us more about how shoppers are adjusting right now than a lot of industry analysis calls do.

And Deborah pushed back on the whole premise. She wrote that her sister managed a high-end supermarket for years, watched pallets come in from the same distributor, and saw the same products labeled differently for store brands and national brands. Worth keeping in mind when thinking about which categories really do warrant the premium and which probably do not.

How comments like these shape what we publish

When our team spots a pattern in audience replies, we treat it as raw research. A few examples of how that plays out.

When a specific category keeps showing up as a non-negotiable, like mayo, ketchup, or peanut butter, we make sure both national-brand offers and useful store-brand swaps are covered in our guides. We do not push readers in one direction. Different shoppers have different priorities, and our job is to lay out the options clearly.

When we see comments like Jennifer's, we are reminded that coupon and cashback availability genuinely shapes which brands win in someone's pantry. This informs our daily work and was a driving force behind our cashback feature, which launched alongside our existing coupon library in late 2025. Promotions are not just discounts. They are signals that help shoppers decide where their dollars go.

When a particular brand keeps coming up in replies but is missing from our active deal pages, we go look. Sometimes there is an offer we wasn’t yet on our radar. Or, maybe the brand simply does not run public promotions, which is useful information for our readers, too.

What our team takes from this

Saving money is personal. There is no single right answer to a question like the one we asked, which is exactly what makes the answers useful.

A few themes we keep coming back to:

Brand loyalty is not a flaw. There are real reasons people stick with certain products, and trying to argue someone out of a mayo they have loved for thirty years is not a winning strategy. Spending a little more on the few items that genuinely matter highlights what products you are happy to follow the savings for in the cart.

Coupons change the math more often than people realize. A national brand with an active promotion stacked with cashback can land below the store-brand price on a given week. The shoppers who save the most tend to stay open to both sides and pay attention to which brands are running deals.

Reader input is part of our editorial calendar. Every comment, reply, and survey response shapes what our team prioritizes next. Coupons.com has been around since 1998, and the reason the site is still useful in 2026 is that the people who work here are paying attention.

The next time a question from our team pops up on your feed, the people behind it really are reading the replies. One good comment is sometimes all it takes to move a new guide up the editorial calendar.