A transaction cost rationale for private branding and its implications for the choice of domestic vs offshore outsourcing

In this study, I take a transaction cost approach to explore the coincidence of private branding with offshore outsourcing – two retail trends that have attracted substantial attention but have never been analyzed concurrently. Retailers now play an increased role in marketing a product to shoppers, although their marketing efforts are usually specific to the supplier who brands the product. This is called brand specificity, a special case of...