© 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1350-23IX Brand Management Vol. 17, 5, 368–389 www.palgrave-journals.com/bm/ Correspondence: Michael R. Hyman College of Business, New Mexico State University, Box 30001, Dept. 5280, Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001, USA Original Article Review of literature – Future research suggestions: Private label brands: Benefi ts, success factors and future research Received (in revised form): 26th December 2008 Michael R. Hyman is Stan Fulton Chair of Marketing at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, NM (mhyman@nmsu.edu). He serves on nine editorial review boards and has authored more than 60 articles in journals such as Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Advertising, and Psychology & Marketing. His research interests include the effect of advertising on consumers, marketing ethics, marketing theory, survey research methods, and knowledge acquisition in academia. Dennis A. Kopf is Assistant Professor of Marketing at University of Wisconsin – Whitewater in Whitewater, WI (kopfd@uww.edu). His published work has appeared in the Journal of Business Research and several conference proceedings. Dongdae Lee is Professor of Marketing at Dong-A University in Pusan, South Korea (ddlee@dau.ac.kr). His articles have been published in journals such as Journal of Marketing Theory & Practice, Journal of Global Marketing, International Marketing Review and Journal of International Consumer Marketing. His research interests include country and brand image, retailing, and market efficiency. ABSTRACT As the worldwide market share of private label brands (PLBs) increases, the importance of PLB-related research increases. Previous PLB-related literature reviews – none published since 2004, which is before roughly 45 per cent of published empirical and theoretical studies on PLBs – were either written for a general business audience or summarized a small subset of scholarly literature. In contrast, this article focuses on the corpus of empirical and theoretical PLB-related scholarly research from the past two decades. After distilling the gains retailers and manufacturers may realize from PLBs and the factors that encourage PLB profitability, it presents a framework for future research. Journal of Brand Management (2010) 17, 368–389. doi:10.1057/bm.2009.33; published online 27 November 2009 Keywords: private label brands; national brands; studies on private label brands; benefits of private label brands