Store brands are winning the AI recommendation game. A groundbreaking study found that artificial intelligence (AI) search engines and answer engines like Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Google AI Overviews recommend private-label grocery products at nearly double the rate of century-old national brands, signaling a fundamental shift in how consumers discover what to buy.

Why Are AI Engines Favoring Store Brands Over National Names?

The research, conducted by 5W AI Communications, analyzed how five major AI platforms cite 25 grocery brands across consumer-intent searches. The findings were striking: store brands averaged a citation share of 44, while national brands averaged just 23, a gap of 1.9 times. This disparity reflects a deeper change in how AI systems work compared to traditional search engines and advertising.

National consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) brands built their dominance through shelf space, television advertising, and search engine optimization, all tools designed for the "memory era" of marketing. Store brands, by contrast, developed content footprints that align naturally with how AI answer engines retrieve and recommend information. As one expert explained, the shift represents a fundamental mismatch between old marketing strategies and new technology.

"National CPG brands optimized for the memory era. Store brands, almost by accident, built exactly the content footprint the answer era rewards," said Ronn Torossian, founder and chairman of 5W.

Ronn Torossian, Founder and Chairman at 5W AI Communications

The study examined six grocery subcategories using 64 different consumer-intent prompts across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. Eight of the ten most-cited brands in the index are store brands, with Trader Joe's (78 citations) and Kirkland Signature (74 citations) leading ahead of iconic names like Cheerios, Oreo, and Heinz.

Which Brands Are Winning and Losing in AI Recommendations?

The results reveal a clear hierarchy emerging in AI-driven discovery. Trader Joe's and Kirkland Signature dominate the rankings, but the study uncovered another striking finding: Good & Gather, a store brand launched in 2019, already receives more citations than Cheerios, a brand with over a century of market presence. This suggests that well-constructed store brands can reach parity with established national brands in less than a decade when optimized for AI visibility.

Conversely, several major national brands are struggling. Tyson, Philadelphia, Frosted Flakes, Hellmann's, and Campbell's all landed in the bottom third of the index, often appearing in AI responses as comparison points rather than primary recommendations. This positioning effectively makes them the alternative consumers consider only after the AI engine suggests a store brand.

• Top Performers: Trader Joe's and Kirkland Signature lead the entire index with 78 and 74 citations respectively, outranking all national brands measured in the study.
• Rising Challengers: Good & Gather, despite launching in 2019, already exceeds citation rates for Cheerios and other century-old brands, demonstrating rapid AI visibility growth.
• Struggling Giants: Tyson, Philadelphia, Frosted Flakes, Hellmann's, and Campbell's appear primarily as comparison points in AI recommendations rather than as primary suggestions.

How to Understand AI Citation Share and What It Means for Consumers

• Citation Share Metric: This measures how often an AI engine mentions or recommends a brand in response to consumer questions, replacing traditional "unaided awareness" as the key visibility metric in the AI era.
• Content Footprint Alignment: Brands with content structures that match how AI systems retrieve information gain visibility advantages, regardless of traditional marketing spend or brand heritage.
• Market Momentum: Private-label grocery sales hit a record $282.8 billion in 2025, representing a 21.3% dollar share and growing nearly three times faster than national brands, a trend AI visibility is amplifying rather than creating.

The study is the first in a five-part research series from 5W examining AI visibility gaps across multiple retail categories. Subsequent editions covering Amazon and e-commerce, pet products, pharmacy and over-the-counter medications, and supplements are being released weekly. This broader research effort aims to measure whether the private-label advantage holds across different product categories or remains specific to grocery.

The implications extend beyond individual brands. The research demonstrates that AI is not creating the private-label surge already underway in U.S. retail, but rather compounding it. As consumers increasingly rely on AI answer engines for product recommendations, the advantage shifts from brands that dominated the television and shelf-space era to those optimized for AI retrieval. For national CPG brands, the findings suggest that traditional marketing approaches may no longer be sufficient to maintain visibility in an AI-driven discovery landscape.