Copy post — Tela Network

Mercadona and price signals
Nicholas Piano
26 September 2026
Post #159
http://tela.network/forum/159/

Mercadona is Spain's largest supermarket chain. One of their goals is to replace all third-party products with products from their supplier network under the unified brand name Hacendado. There are many other examples of this pattern worldwide, such as Kirkland Signature in the United States.

During a lecture on the Mercadona business philosophy in the Lanzadera Startup Accelerator, a longtime veteran of Mercadona leadership noted with frustration that they had been unable to displace products like Coca Cola with the Hacendado brand.

The advantage of competitive capitalism, where multiple companies offer similar products, is that users give clear signals via their behaviour. It would seem to me that by unifying all products under a single brand, you capture this user signal once, but then never again. You lose the ability to respond to user input.

An alternative could be: temporary series of new products that compete directly with existing products to see what users prefer.