Environmental and social criteria evaluation in private label products supplier selection and development by Brazilian retail: a multiple qualitative study

Multinational companies are facing the need to adopt sustainable practices, as well a big retailers. The private label products, that carry the retail flag aligned with sustainability, must fit within these patterns. This research contributes with the retail literature,, since there are not many papers about private label and environmental and social sustainability thematic. The goal is to investigate how and which environmental and social criteria are important for retailer regarding private label products supplier’s – is innovator. Besides this, this research intends to comprehend what are the certifications and indicators that are used to assure if sustainable patterns have been followed. For this, we adopted the qualitative research method, and the data collection wasthrough semi-structured interviews with three of the big ten retailers of Brazil, three private label product supplier and Abmapro, in addition document research. The data analysis was performed with content analyses technique (semantic criteria), with the data grouped into thematic categories. The main result is a better comprehension and mapping of which environmental and social indicators are required in the supplier’s contract and how the compliance verification of these requirements happens in the relationship between retailers and private label product supplier’s.

Private label; Suppliers; Retail; Sustainability; Social responsibility