23 ms·

Beware of 'shrinkflation,' inflation's devious cousin

• ars 5y ago
  When I can, I don't look at prices, I only look at $/unit. Some stores (like WalMart and Costco) make this very easy, and I pick the cereal with the best $/unit price.
  • Wistar 5y ago
    I have paid an ever increasing amount of attention to the $/unit price, especially with coffee. It can be surprising.
    • mixmastamyk 5y ago
      Good for chocolate as well. I've found chocolate chips are about half the cost of bars at our store for whatever reason. One is the amount is larger.
  • ComputerGuru 5y ago
    Pro tip for other readers: often enough, the smaller box that usually has a higher cost/oz will be on sale making it a better deal than a larger/bulk size which isn’t. Reasons for not making both on sale unclear, but I see it all the time. What I hate is when I'm shopping on Amazon and it's one for $5, or get a pack of fifty for $7. There's no way I'm ever going to buy the one at such a price disparity, so I end up with a house full of 48 unused items.
    • axaxs 5y ago
      Same, and it's really annoying from a waste/hassle perspective. Just last week I was buying dish soap. Something like 32 oz for 6.99, or 16 oz for 2.99 on sale. So here I am stuck buying 2 packages out of spite.
    • r00fus 5y ago
      I did that once for a much cheaper dental floss. I ended up with ~120 units of floss I could never use (besides it was not great fit for my teeth). I ended up giving them all away that year with the Halloween candy. Told every kid to take one along with the candy. Accompanying moms kept giving me a thumbs up. Likewise, my wife tends to freely give out stuff on our local buy-nothing group (though honestly we don't tend to do mass purchases anymore).
    • koolba 5y ago
      The most egregious example of this I’ve ever seen was at a liquor store where a 750ml bottle of Vermouth was double the price of a 1750ml bottle. Not double per ml, double of the absolute price.
      • mbg721 5y ago
        Was it in a jurisdiction where there's heavy state control of liquor sales? Those don't behave like usual markets do.
      • wombatpm 5y ago
        Because only a hard core alcoholic would buy 1750ml bottle of Vermouth? For everyone else 750ml is a lifetime amount. My martini recipe started at 3 parts gin, wave uncapped bottle of vermouth, add olive. Step 2 is now show gin a picture of a Closed bottle of vermouth
        • mixmastamyk 5y ago
          Never understood the fear of vermouth?
          • taejo 5y ago
            Fear of vermouth or love of straight gin?
            • moate 5y ago
              Just call it "a glass of gin with an olive" then and accept who you are as a person.
              • koolba 5y ago
                The next step is removing the olive. That’s when you true acceptance has been achieved.
        • ComputerGuru 5y ago
    • AlexCoventry 5y ago
      I wound up doing that with dental floss over a decade ago. I'm still working through that haul, and I floss every day. Fortunately, they don't take much space.
    • onion2k 5y ago
      What I hate is when I'm shopping on Amazon and it's one for $5, or get a pack of fifty for $7. If the majority of the cost of selling cheap things on Amazon is fixed (Amazon stocking fees, carrier fees, etc) then the actual profit to the seller on the $7 item is probably higher than it is on the $5 item. They know very few people will buy the $5 individual item; it exists to make the higher priced, higher profit item look like a bargain.
    • User23 5y ago
      If it's something that's nonperishable that you're eventually going to use, like toilet paper or soap, then so long as you have the storage space the fifty pack is a screaming bargain.
    • sumtechguy 5y ago
      The one I see all the time is something is 10oz and 20oz. If I buy 2 10s it should be about the same price as 1 20. But many times the 20oz is a decent percentage higher. So buy 2 smalls. But that does not always hold true so you have to look every time. No 'sales' price. Just the price will be randomly different.
      • mywittyname 5y ago
        Coffee is like this a lot. I always check $/oz of the 20oz bag and the 12oz bag, and there's often a 10-20% difference in unit price for the same brand between the two sizes and I'll just buy whichever is cheaper.
    • def_true_false 5y ago
      If you care about bang for buck at all, Amazon is likely the worst place to do online shopping. Their search is one giant dark pattern. It's good for finding new products if you don't know a good search query (yet). Then you can get the same thing cheaper from China.
  • thaumasiotes 5y ago
    It's not a sure thing. The other common way to raise prices without raising the per-item price is to use more of a low-cost input and less of a high-cost input. For a fictional example, if Croesus circulated electrum (mixed gold/silver) coins as the internal currency of Lydia, and increasing trade with China then spiked the value of silver, you'd expect to see new coins use more gold and less silver while maintaining the same face value.
  • gdulli 5y ago
    I see stores obfuscate this all the time by showing some unit prices as per lb, some per oz, and some per 100 count, all for different versions of the same product.
    • SilverRed 5y ago
      Thankfully this is a non issue in metric countries. Unless they put one in an actual unit and one in a per item.
  • jbay808 5y ago
    Me too, but I'm not savvy enough to track these changes over time. I wouldn't normally remember what the price per 100g was last month, even if it matched this month's sale price.
• deleted 5y ago
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• themodelplumber 5y ago
  Hmmm, I mean, I've got room for some cereal serving shrinkage. Let's see how this goes. (Smirks in ginormous 40 oz. bag of Malt-O Meal Cocoa Dyno-Bites)
• clarkmoody 5y ago
  Great thing for people to be aware of, but NPR didn't mention the Fed and the policy of targeting inflation a single time, which is a shame. For fans of shrinkflation, you should also enjoy /r/shrinkflation on Reddit.
  • brantonb 5y ago
    This is from the show Planet Money. While they might not have talked about it in this particular episode, they do talk about both the Fed’s inflation target and also inflation itself quite a bit. As does their sibling show, The Indicator by Planet Money. I’m not sure if they’re agreeable to your point of view, but both programs are well produced and I enjoy them.
• gnicholas 5y ago
  Whenever I see "new look, same great taste", it makes me wary of this. Perhaps the package was redesigned for purely aesthetic reasons, but in many cases it's to cover for the fact that they shrunk the package.
  • AlexCoventry 5y ago
    I've noticed this happening to potato chips, but I can't really complain since they're garbage anyway. :) view-source:https://www.mouseprint.org/2020/08/03/here-we-downsize-again-summer-2020/ https://www.mouseprint.org/2020/08/03/here-we-downsize-again...
  • Scoundreller 5y ago
    Apparently toothpaste used to be made with silver fluoride (obviously expensive or at least so after the fall of the gold standard). When they switched to tin fluoride, it was “new and improved” too. Source: cranky old chemistry professor that’s probably deceased now
    • bbojan 5y ago
      Well it did improve the manufacturer's bottom line.
    • selectodude 5y ago
      They never used silver fluoride in toothpaste. They used sodium fluoride in toothpaste before tin fluoride, and the tin fluoride is, in fact, "new and improved" since it also kills the bacteria that causes gingivitis. You can get silver fluoride drops but it's pretty damaging shit for anything that isn't teeth.
• ardit33 5y ago
  This happens even in non packages products, aka services. I play rec. soccer, and have signed up for different leagues over the time. Back in 2013-2015 for each game, the usual time was about 60 mins slot, with few minutes given for a mid game break and in between games team switch. So, about 27 mins for a half, 5 mins a half game break, and a bit of a margin. Over time this has been shrinking when it became 55mins, then 50, and now a partly 40mins for a whole game. You basically get 18 mins half. To add to the injury each team now is stuffed with more players, so you have more subs and less play. it is annoying. Usually it was only one crappy league doing this, but now the other ones are started to shrink game times, raise prices and so profits. So.... yeah, shrinkflation even in soccer games.
  • AuthorizedCust 5y ago
    Wow. I play in Dallas’s men’s adult soccer league, the NTPSA. Roster size is controlled by the team captain, with a max of 25, and we get 45 minute halves. Maybe the main shrink is deteriorating field conditions as cities decline to maintain them properly? But the NTPSA can’t really control that.
    • ardit33 5y ago
      This are 7vs7, so it is super casual co-ed leagues and in NYC. Something you play after work. There was only one or two, leagues doing this (the shrinking of times and packing) now it is most of them. 22 to 25 mins halves, are a luxury right now. It sucks... Ps. There are more serious leagues, but they tend to play in fields further away from Manhattan. And the current leagues profit out of the 'there is always newbies moving into nyc every year', mantra.
  • Al-Khwarizmi 5y ago
    Not as flabbergasted by the shrinkflation as by finding out that you need to pay to play recreational soccer in the US and there is someone profiting from it. I've always seen that as something ran by volunteers. After all, contrary to other sports, the resources needed to play soccer are minimal (a ball, a field and two goals), why do you need for-profit companies at all?
• ls612 5y ago
  Inflation measures aren’t stupid, they measure this too. If you sell a 15oz box for the same price you sold a 16oz box that will show up in the inflation numbers
  • amrcnimgrnt 5y ago
    They kinda measure it, through heuristics. But it's like the heuristics for the price of a house (which is considered an investment and not included directly in CPI): you can't capture it very well. For example, lets say a chocolate bar contains 80% chocolate and 20% food wax. A year later it contains 70% chocolate and 30% food wax. No inflation measure in the world accurately measures that. You can't measure for it because there's too many judgement calls if you do. Also, there are goods/services whose quantities are not well measured. Another commenter wrote about his soccer league lowering the amount of pitch time a "session" takes while increasing the players - both diminishing his play time. That's not getting captured at all.
    • thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > say a chocolate bar contains 80% chocolate and 20% food wax. A year later it contains 70% chocolate and 30% food wax. No inflation measure in the world accurately measures that. You can't measure for it because there's too many judgement calls if you do. I think the bigger problem is that it's difficult to tell when this happens. There are judgment calls you need to make to adjust for this, but it's not an intractable problem. Official data sources have to make more subjective judgment calls than this constantly.
      • amrcnimgrnt 5y ago
        This is a huge problem, thank you for writing it down. Grab a Hershey chocolate bar. How much chocolate is in there? Who knows?
        • def_true_false 5y ago
          It's somewhat easier to measure if you ignore brands and look at commodity prices instead. Whole chicken (price per kg) instead of Big Mac, 100% cocoa instead of some random chocolate bar, etc. Of course, for many (most?) people, that will be even less relevant than the current consumer basket.
• maddyboo 5y ago
  I've been shopping on Instacart a lot during the pandemic and I've noticed a related phenomenon: packaging designed to make products look bigger than they really are, especially in online photos. It's not necessarily a new thing, but the online photo aspect is somewhat novel because you don't get to see the product in context. For example, a jar of Jalapenos, product photo: https://i.imgur.com/mprWr6R.jpg https://i.imgur.com/mprWr6R.jpg In reality, the jar's cross-section isn't circular as it appears, it's an ellipse/oval: https://i.imgur.com/dXDUOR9.png https://i.imgur.com/dXDUOR9.png Only the first photo was included in the item listing. When the groceries were delivered and I pulled out the jar, I was so surprised by the odd football-like shape that I couldn’t stop laughing for a few minutes at how well they’d fooled me. Another common thing to see is familiar product packaging that is just “scaled down”. Everything about the packaging looks the same or very similar, but smaller - especially fonts. This deceives the eye into believing the product is much larger. I recently fell for this when shopping for some conditioner. The packaging is not exactly the same but close enough to fool me at a glance: What I bought: https://i.imgur.com/MdAuhS0.png https://i.imgur.com/MdAuhS0.png What I expected: https://i.imgur.com/MGxdD0d.png https://i.imgur.com/MGxdD0d.png I'm inclined the believe this is on purpose because in real life, the fonts are way too small to read comfortably. If not trying to mislead, I would expect the packaging to be designed to be legible, right? It's especially frustrating because I usually would've just paid more for the larger size.
  • irjustin 5y ago
    My favorite are the photoshopped images where the sizing is completely off. This sewing machine's image[0] looks huge! When in reality, it's $20 and mostly a "toy" machine; not much bigger than 4AA batteries[1]. Or maybe the dude is just really small. More hilarious than nefarious as in your case. [0] https://my-test-11.slatic.net/original/8dcf4c63812b0453fc3ed4931ea7b5d7.jpg_720x720q80.jpg_.webp https://my-test-11.slatic.net/original/8dcf4c63812b0453fc3ed... [1] https://laz-img-sg.alicdn.com/p/3126136a068a0eca84086249126be71d.jpg https://laz-img-sg.alicdn.com/p/3126136a068a0eca84086249126b...
    • panda88888 5y ago
      I have the plug in version of this sewing machine. Yup, it’s is pretty small in real life.
• mbg721 5y ago
  This is a textbook example of short-term business thinking, and it's especially dumb; besides using up packaging for no good reason, there's a natural limit to how small you can make your packages for any product. Your customers might be idiots, but they're not infinitely idiots.
  • mason55 5y ago
    Eventually you introduce a new larger sized product and can charge more for it without the wrath of “raising prices”
  • smnrchrds 5y ago
    Not if they do it like this: Step 1: Shrink existing packages but keep the same price Step 2: Introduce a new package with a catchy name like "mega-sized" that is equivalent to the older normal size but now for a higher price Step 3: Discontinue the smaller package Step 4: Rinse and repeat
    • adventurer 5y ago
      I have seen Walmart and the supermarket offer the bigger family size box which cost more per oz than the smaller box. Maybe this is the short time where they offer both sizes and faze the other out but it sure makes me think people don't pay attention. People can't seem to do simple math based on how sales prices are consistently implemented. Coke and Pepsi sales alone is a good example. Calculating the cost of a 24 pack as cheaper than a 12 is a mystery to the average consumer.
      • DSMan195276 5y ago
        I disagree that people are incapable, I think a large portion just don't care all that much. Frankly I certainly fall into that category for lots of things - I'm more concerned with getting a reasonable amount (and not wasting tons of time in the store) than the exact cheapest price, especially when the difference usually isn't that drastic in the end. Going with your example, I buy a 12 pack because I don't drink pop that often and really don't have room to store a 24 pack, so saving a dollar or two just doesn't justify it for me. Where-as for other products that I do get a lot of I take the time to make sure I'm getting a good deal. I will readily say that the above is a luxury that not everybody has, but then buying the best per oz price is a luxury not everybody has either. Certainly there are oddball cases like you pointed out, but typically the larger items have a better per oz pricing and not everybody can afford the higher upfront price even if the per item price is less.
• echelon 5y ago
  At an even more macro level outside of momentary inflation, this feels like a great averaging of economies. The US economy led the world in the post war period until the mid-2000s. Our potion sizes were internationally known to be much larger. (We were sometimes derided for the Big Gulp.) Now we're approaching European and Asian sized cereal boxes. Tiny, less expensive cars are popular. More people are renters... The wealth and low hanging fruit are draining out of the US and onto the rest of the world. It's fascinating to watch. A lot of people don't seem to notice.
  • Sebb767 5y ago
    > Tiny, less expensive cars are popular. Are you sure? From what I see, SUVs are on the rise, which are anything but tiny and inexpensive.
  • nradov 5y ago
    You should shop at Costco sometime. Look at the cars in the parking lot, and then check out the sizes of cereal boxes in the store.
  • chrisseaton 5y ago
    > Tiny, less expensive cars are popular. No idea where you have this idea from - reality is they’re tanking > Most subcompacts were out of production by the end of [2019] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subcompact_car https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subcompact_car
• sunshineforever 5y ago
  Just a joke, but at least General Mills isn't associated with non consensually "shrinking" my penis via unnecessary circumcision... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg
• swighton 5y ago
  I’ve coined a term that describes a new form of inflation that I call “crapflation.” If you buy things on Amazon you often now pay the same (or even more) for the cheapest import garbage. Essentially stuff that would be in a dollar store.
  • Vadoff 5y ago
    Part of the problem is fake reviews. Normally crap products have shit reviews, but this becomes unreliable when fake reviews boost crap products to 5 stars.
    • andy_ppp 5y ago
      There is going to be a class action lawsuit on this eventually but it currently benefits Amazon so they don’t fix it meaning I cannot trust the reviews on anything anymore.
• etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
  I remember reading and seeing on TV the exact same thing during 2008/9. But back then we had economic deflation, not inflation. Back then, people and business were running out of money. Today, we have inflation, we have plenty of money, but we're running out of raw materials.
  • OneLeggedCat 5y ago
    It was widespread in 2009. Every 16-ounce can of beans or whatever turned into a 14.5-ounce can. It was everywhere.
  • jsymolon 5y ago
    " ... I noted this phenomenon in describing how ice cream underwent stealth inflation late in the Bush Administration, when the venerable half-gallon container was disappeared and replaced with 1.5-quart and 1.75-quart lookalikes." https://reason.com/2012/06/01/more-stealth-inflation-shrinking-portion/ https://reason.com/2012/06/01/more-stealth-inflation-shrinki... I remember the 1/2 gallon square boxes of ice cream. The tubs now make it less messy but the point still stands. Secret inflation.
• mensetmanusman 5y ago
  This has also been happening in the iOS ecosystem. I have had a few iPads over the past 10 years, and most of the usable useful apps that I used to use are now unavailable due to killed backwards compatibility. Or, if they are usable, most have been replaced by subscription service based versions (which would never make sense to purchase for tasks I do so infrequently). I miss the early days of iOS and all the simple apps released for a $1 that did one thing well and ignored feature bloat. Those days are gone. Hopefully we are at a stage now where apps made today will run for a 100 years… Actually, that would be a good wager: at what year will an iOS version be released wherein apps that are subsequently released will be available to mankind, without update, for 100 years.
  • urda 5y ago
    This (your comment) is not shrinkflation.
  • SilverRed 5y ago
    >I miss the early days of iOS and all the simple apps released for a $1 that did one thing well They largely died when the OS added all of those one things. No one is paying $1 for a flashlight app or a reminders app anymore.
• MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  Several soft drink companies have been trying to do this, with varying levels of success. It's easy to buy a 20oz Coca Cola from a cooler at any grocery or convenience store. On the shelf? They're 16.1 oz. A few years ago they tried to introduce a 1.5 liter bottle for the same price as the 2 liter bottle. On the flip side, go to a Family Dollar and you'll find tons of items that cost a buck in near-full size packaging with a fraction of the product you would expect from such a package.
  • chrisseaton 5y ago
    > Several soft drink companies have been trying to do this, with varying levels of success. Isn’t this actually a healthy thing? People should drink Coca Cola in more moderate quantities.
    • MisterBastahrd 5y ago
      It's not healthy to drink 200 calories of sugar water as part of your daily diet. It's even less healthy to crush a second bottle because the limited size of the first one didn't quench your thirst.
  • jsymolon 5y ago
    > go to a Family Dollar ... Double check the expiration date.
    • ls612 5y ago
      How on earth is sealed Coke going to expire??
• nazgulnarsil 5y ago
  I've appreciated how shrinkflation has brought serving sizes down from 'American' back to 'Reasonable.'
  • chrisseaton 5y ago
    Right - I thought we were pushing for more reasonable portion sizes? Isn’t this what we wanted a few years ago?
    • moate 5y ago
      That's all well and good except for the "charging the same price as we did when there was 20% more product". I love the tiny cans of soda now available in US supermarkets. They're all I buy at this point. But if they were being sold for a dollar a can at the 7/11, I would be pissed.
      • chrisseaton 5y ago
        Soemtimes prices for resources and labour go up. That’s not a big conspiracy, or a trick being played on anyone, it’s just a reality of the economy.
        • moate 5y ago
          So sell me the same sized thing for the price plus inflated cost. Of course it’s not a conspiracy, it’s just deceptive marketing. I can accept that a hamburger that cost a dollar 20 years ago shouldn’t still cost a dollar. My preference for how to deal with it is raising the cost, not offering an inferior product. Other people might prefer to just get less for their dollar (or whatever currency they use where you are).
          • chrisseaton 5y ago
            But people have fixed incomes. They have the same budget even if your product costs more. Provide them something at the same cost and they can keep buying it. Raise the price and maybe they can't. > it’s just deceptive marketing As long as they print the net weight or quantity or whatever on the packaging I'm a-ok with it.
• Phenomenit 5y ago
  Because of the lack of true economic growth the central banks keep printing a copious amount of money and the market does everything it can to hide the inflation. Everything is becoming more expensive or worse in quality or amount. Everybody is richer but what the market is offering just keeps getting worse and its hiding the inflation.
  • brippalcharrid 5y ago
    It has become so endemic in society; the money supply is controlled under the assumption that innovators and managers will somehow be able to keep finding efficiencies and improvements that manage to reduce the costs of production by X% per year in order to obscure the currency's diminishing value and hide the actual level of inflation. It's a really insidious form of taxation used by central planners, and societies have become completely addicted to it in a way that they're never going to be able to outrun it long enough to escape it.
    • amanaplanacanal 5y ago
      It's really good for debters though, which is pretty much everybody these days. That 30 year mortgage you just got will mostly be inflated away.
      • thomasahle 5y ago
        Whoever gave you the loan knew that, and they adjusted the interest rate and conditions to still make it a good deal for them. If inflation had been lower, the loan's interest would have been too.
        • Retric 5y ago
          These aren’t independent variables as people on average can only pay so much for housing per month. High interest rates lower the value of properties to keep things sufficiently affordable. Thus low inflation is actually really bad for first time home buyers who can a just afford the mortgage in year 1 and likely still just afford the mortgage in year 15.
• isoskeles 5y ago
  I'm waiting to see us come up with clever ways to shrinkflate food that is priced in weight (e.g. $6.99/lb). Perhaps we can create some new, arbitrary unit of weight will be created, like ib, Ib, llb, ld, etc. that looks like a typo and tricks my mind into thinking I am getting a deal on a pound (lb) of ground beef when I am actually buying less of it. Bonus points if the unit of weight is not constant, fluctuating week after week based on market conditions, maybe tied to some new digital currency.
  • jbay808 5y ago
    That's actually how traditional weights and measures used to work. Tithes and taxes owed to the lord were set out in age-old contracts that even the lord couldn't change, with things like "ten pounds of grain" written in the contract. But the lord controlled the legal measures and would adjust the length of a foot, volume of a gallon, and weight of a pound as suited the conditions. The measurements would consequently vary between one feudal domain and the next, as well as over time. This is why the metric system, which promised standardized, invariant, and universal measures, was hailed as a win for the people during the French Revolution.
  • em500 5y ago
    Poultry and fish are often injected with water in the processing chain. You notice it when you want to fry your fish and it quickly turns into cooking/steaming instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumping
    • mywittyname 5y ago
      Chicken too. It often comes to the grocery store "brined."
    • c0nducktr 5y ago
      Similarly, there's a chemical - sodium tripolyphosphate - which some producers add to scallops, that causes them to absorb more moisture so they can sell you fewer at the same price, as they're also sold by weight. https://www.cooksillustrated.com/articles/1875-why-you-should-avoid-wet-scallops https://www.cooksillustrated.com/articles/1875-why-you-shoul...
• xpe 5y ago
  > A study [1] by John T. Gourville and Jonathan J. Koehler analyzed data from the market for cereal and other sectors and found that consumers are much more gullible than classic theory predicts. They are more sensitive to changes in price than to changes in quantity. Companies, of course, have known this for years. [1]: Gourville, John T., and Jonathan J. Koehler. "Downsizing Price Increases: A Greater Sensitivity to Price Than Quantity in Consumer Markets." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 04-042, March 2004. Get the full text at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=559482 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=559482 NPR only linked to a citation page :( https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=15756 https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=15756
  • esyir 5y ago
    This is something that would be improved by something common in the eu. Price /weight or volume on labels.
    • KozmoNau7 5y ago
      I appreciate that all prices in shops here also show the price per kg/liter or per individual unit in case of things like eggs. As a downside, it does lead to "crafty consumers" using the unit price as their highest priority criteria for selecting products, and disregarding factors like quality and nutrition. This leads to way too many products in the ultra low price segment, and a hard time for makers of higher quality products. It's a race to the bottom, and shrinkflation still happens.
      • fogihujy 5y ago
        Going by price/kg is the best way to get around it. One still has to avoid low-quality products but that would apply if you looked at nothing but the packaging as well.
      • me_me_me 5y ago
        > it does lead to "crafty consumers" using the unit price as their highest priority criteria for selecting products, and disregarding factors like quality and nutrition. That will happen no matter what. If you are poor you pay attention to price of the things you buy more then quality. I know it from practice, only when you have some financial stability you can educate yourself to pick the best product and not just kg/$. > This leads to way too many products in the ultra low price segment, and a hard time for makers of higher quality products. I don't think there is any kind of competition between quality product vs cheap products. Be it food or tools or etc. Both cater to different segment. Its like saying that if ford or fiat slash their prices by half, mercedes will loose some of the customers. Poorer people don't have much choice but to settle for cheaper options. When you have more money you will not buy processed food etc even though its cheap then quality unprocessed food because its hidden cost of health damage is too high.
• mikewarot 5y ago
  You can't buy a 5 Pound bag of sugar because of this.
• klodolph 5y ago
  Grocery store pricing is messed up to begin with. Anyone who is price-conscious has to evaluate based on price per weight or something similar in the first place. Which can be difficult / inconvenient! Sometimes it's the 10-pak that's cheaper per unit. Sometimes it's the 20-pak. Different products may not be directly comparable. Different varieties of the same product category might appear at two or three places in the same store, not counting end-caps.
  • hiram112 5y ago
    It might just be my state or store, but most products do, in fact, include a price per item or prize per unit of weight or volume in very small print on the price labels. I'm guessing this was introduced as a law, in good faith to help consumers make more informed decisions, but I doubt the majority of numerically challenged consumers take advantage of this information. For example, all pricing labels in-store will have prices like the following, from their weekly ad: https://ibb.co/187RkPb https://ibb.co/187RkPb
    • klodolph 5y ago
      I mention this because the article seemed to assume that people were buying by the box, and only evaluating price per box, ignoring the weight. Price per weight only partially solves the problems... lots of products aren't directly comparable in the first place. For example, 100g of product X is not like 100g of product Y. It works well enough with things like raw ingredients (flour, oil, etc) but even once you are talking about things like cereal, jams, mayonnaise, etc. it starts to break down. It also doesn't work well with meat.
    • OkGoDoIt 5y ago
      I have noticed that a surprising amount of time one product will be in a certain unit while a competitor product will be in a different unit. So one will have the price per pound and one will have the price per ounce, good luck trying to divide by 16 in your head to see if you’re saving a few cents here or there. it’s so common that I have to assume it’s on purpose, probably an instance of complying with the letter of the law but not the spirit.
• coldtea 5y ago
  In a rational society, this practice should be disallowed while keeping the same product name and price. Either adjust the price accordingly, or be forced to put a big red sign with something like "Now with 10% less content (compared to before DD/MM/YY)". Even better, products should have their key content-size metric on the box, very visible, normalized by the price. E.g. XX/ounce. If the retailer makes a discount or changes the price, they should add a label with their changed price YY/ounce.
  • nanidin 5y ago
    For a while, Walmart price tags showed $ per unit. I think that helps keep things fair.
  • MrYellowP 5y ago
    I agree that, in rational societies, this should not be a thing. We don't live in rational societies, though. We live in irrational societies, controlled by fear, euphoria and drama.
    • npteljes 5y ago
      And convenience.
• wirthjason 5y ago
  > If consumers were the rational creatures depicted in classic economic theory, they would notice shrinkflation. They would keep their eyes on the price per Cocoa Puff and not fall for gimmicks in how companies package those Cocoa Puffs. It’s not that consumers are not rational. Optimizing around 1 oz change of coco puffs isn’t really a good return on investment for many people. Certainly people with limited budgets or fixed incomes might notice the change and adjust. However if you are running to the store after dropping you kid off at soccer practice and only have 30 min to shop you care more about time than the small amount of money they are “up charging”. Besides, people might be in-elastic with regards to their brands. Certainly I could switch to another cereal but if I want coco puffs I’ll pay the premium because lucky charms won’t substitute.
  • compsciphd 5y ago
    but malt-o-meals bags probably would. (cursory check shows that ~60oz bags at walmart online for approximately ~$6) I stopped buying the best named brands and switched most of my cereal buying to malt o meal brands, didn't really notice a difference.
    • wirthjason 5y ago
      That’s exactly the point. Elastic consumers would have likely already switched long before a 1oz change in the box. But if malt o meal went from a 60oz bag to a 55oz one you’d probably still continue buying it rather than switching to something else. It’s OK to be elastic for some purchases and in-elastic for others. Very rarely is price per unit the sole criteria for a consumers choice.
      • Nbox9 5y ago
        There’s more customers to lose on the margin. My grocery budget is $100/week, which I break into two $50 shopping trips. I will swap to cheaper brands than I am accustomed to in order to or remove unnecessary items all together in order to fit my budget.
  • s_dev 5y ago
• tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  It's a shame this doesn't happen with cars.
• Wildgoose 5y ago
  We had a similar process in the Middle Ages - the amount of bread in a loaf would varied while the price remained the same. Of course nowadays the price rises as well as the product shrinking.
  • Wildgoose 5y ago
    In England the Assize of Bread was created in the 13th century. These laws set up price controls for bakers, which would allow someone to buy at least some quantity of bread for a penny. Every year at least the size of this bread would be set according to the price of wheat and other grains – if the grain supply was expensive, your penny would only get you a small amount of bread; if grain was plentiful, than the size of the loaf would increase. https://sites.google.com/site/atenveldtcooksguild/redactions-and-recipes/bread-in-the-middle-ages https://sites.google.com/site/atenveldtcooksguild/redactions...
• kaminar 5y ago
  This phenomenon has occurred since the 1970s...toothpaste used to be in 8 oz tubes, cans of tuna used to be 8 oz, the o.j. and toilet paper info in the article is also correct. Cookies, chips and other snacks, yogurt, pasta sauce etc. It's sad.
• forinti 5y ago
  There were price controls in the 1980s in Brazil, so producers changed their products so as to introduce a "new" product. This never went away and now we have 90g chocolate bars (down from 200g) and you can find toilet paper rolls with as little as 10m. Some supermarkets will give you the unit price to help you compare.
  • npteljes 5y ago
    This was a huge PITA in Hungary too, until they had to display unit price on each price tag. I'm thankful for that every time I shop.
    • me_me_me 5y ago
      That evil EU goes after poor shady business' practices again. \s I also love this, you can actually quickly make a better decision on what is worth. It would be interesting to see if UK decides to drop this law as result of brexit.
      • def_true_false 5y ago
        Not sure if this was UK specific, but I distinctly remember UK stores full of signs like "7 for the price of 4", "11 for the price of 8", etc, probably to get around this. This was back when UK was still in the EU.
      • npteljes 5y ago
        I love the EU for things like this. We're bombarded with anti-EU sentiments, like how the evil Brussels is forcing their overreaching rules on us, but frankly we're just so much ahead especially because of these rules. Go EU!
  • marcosdumay 5y ago
    > Some supermarkets will give you the unit price to help you compare. I believe they are all required by law to do that. (What, of course, doesn't mean that they all do, but you should be able to get them a fine if you call your local PROCOM.)
• farmerstan 5y ago
  A “pint” of ice cream is only 14 oz now. A package of bacon used to be 16 oz but now it’s 9-12 oz. But in order to make it seem like a lot, they slice the bacon so thin, the pieces stretch and get ruined as you pull them from the package. Same goes for OJ. For those things you can’t shrink, like eggs, they are over $6/dozen in San Fran, I’ve seen some for $10/dozen.
  • vel0city 5y ago
    The bacon thing really frustrates me. Bacon slices are getting way too dang thin, I need to go to the butcher counter for the fresh sliced bacon to get actual thick cuts again.
    • moate 5y ago
      idk about what's available in your area, but are a variety of brands that sell "Thick(er)" cut bacon. They're often a better buy per-pound in my area (NJ) than the equivalent "regular" sliced bacon. That's not even getting into the insanity that is Peter Luger's bacon.
    • philsnow 5y ago
      Costco has great bacon, sliced fairly thick (though not as thick as you'd get from a butcher)
    • vidarh 5y ago
      And you have to look out for ones pumped full of lots of water.
  • bntyhntr 5y ago
    In NYC last year eggs were like 2.50-3.00/dozen on a bad day. Are you shopping somewhere crazy or are nyc and sf that disconnected? I mean, I have seen $10/dozen but they were some premium organic (not kidding) imported from Japan eggs in the Japanese mart.
    • NathanKP 5y ago
• Damogran6 5y ago
  38 ziplock gallon bags on the costco box...used to be 60.
• darksaints 5y ago
  I think that the pollution aspect needs to be considered: deceptively packaged products produce more disposable waste than products that are not deceptively packaged. Unfortunately, nobody that creates consumer products has to worry about the cost to the environment of discarding those products. That should change.
• ordu 5y ago
  > The original Charmin roll of toilet paper, he says, had 650 sheets. In Soviet Russia... (it is a kind of legend, I would not vouch for its truth value) A roll of toilet paper was of 52 meters length. It was because the standard caliber in artillery was 120 mm, so in case of war the industry can be reoriented to fill cartridge case with a powder. When artillery moved to a 125 mm caliber the length of a roll of toiler paper increased to 54 meters.
  • germinalphrase 5y ago
    In opposite direction: after WW2, Grumman and other airplane manufacturers had a bunch of manufacturing capacity with little/nothing to make. This is why there is a large stock of aluminum canoes all around the country where there had been none previously.
    • throwawayboise 5y ago
      They also make the US post home delivery trucks and other government vehicles.
  • grishka 5y ago
    I remember there was a brand of toilet paper that was literally "54 meters".
• TonyTrapp 5y ago
  20 years ago in Germany, many groceries were required to be sold in specific amounts (e.g. 500g or 1000g of cereals). This requirement was eventually lifted, probably all due to lobbying from the producers. Now you have 20 kinds of cereals on the shelf and they all cost the same, but if you look closely every one has a different weight (375g, 500g, 650g, ...). It's crazy. In the end it just means that I need to buy two packages of one kind of cereal because there's less in the package.
  • ninjinxo 5y ago
    In Australia, supermarkets display the unit normalised price on the shelf tag (they do this to highlight the value of their own brand of items). Eg https://imgur.com/a/fjrIECU https://imgur.com/a/fjrIECU
    • skohan 5y ago
      This is also true in Germany, they always display the cost/kg
      • twiddling 5y ago
        common in the US as well
        • athenot 5y ago
          However in US, units themselves are not normalized. Some things are per $/oz, others per $/lb, or $/unit, sill others within a same category go by volume ($/floz, $/qt, $/gal...). It makes comparison a pain: I end up looking at the metric unit on the packaging and doing the mental calculation myself.
          • TonyTrapp 5y ago
            Even in Germany it may vary between €/kg and €/100g for the same type of product. But at least that's easy to convert (just append/remove a 0) compared to switching between imperial units.
• incanus77 5y ago
  Gatorade did this a while back, too, going from 32oz to 28oz (IIRC) under the guise of a thinner-at-the-middle bottle that was more sporty looking.
• bigmattystyles 5y ago
  We’re in a unique position to track this effectively as consumers. We have the tools, the data, etc. It just needs a bit of impetus, which is a big ask, I know. But tracking product price per day unit should be doable as well as standard sold package sizes for brand products.
  • mywittyname 5y ago
    The BLS does actually track the size of goods as well as the price.
• programmertote 5y ago
  I commented similar before. Starting a couple of months ago, I noticed that four slices of the bread, which I buy every week and used to overflow an IKEA FÄRGKLAR plate, now fits perfectly within the circumference of the plate. I also bought some Nongshim’s Neoguri ramen packets from Amazon a few days ago and received it yesterday. I paid slightly higher than I used to, but more importantly, I can tell that the size of the noodle in each pack has shrunk because I have left over packets that I bought from last year.
• h54yh45h43 5y ago
  The value of money decreases as a designed function of our current economic system. This means companies must increase profits to maintain or stay ahead. This means companies have two options. It does not matter if this is during an increased period of inflation or during more "stable" economic times, profits must always increase because inflation is always there, the difference is the rate at which money inflates. Option 1: They keep the amount and increase price. This makes consumers mad and prices consumers out of the market. Option 2: Shrink the amount of product for sale. Consumers are less aware and won't get upset as easily. Consumers get less, but this also ensures that consumers still can get anything at all and not be priced out. This system is flawed to its core. No form of money has survived it. Thankfully, Bitcoin exists now and is the most sound form of hard money the world has ever seen. This is the system I participate in.
  • TaylorSwift 5y ago
    How can bitcoin participate in services/goods which have shrunk?
  • imtringued 5y ago
    >The value of money decreases as a designed function of our current economic system. Well, that is because of quite obvious reasons. People write arbitrary conditions into debt contracts like 5% interest just because. When it turns out that those interest rates were unsustainable they have to be lowered or the contract has to be extended. It would be nice if this happened automatically... Well, that is how inflation works. The only alternative is to pretend that instead of money earning more money it loses you money and the way you protect yourself is by loaning out money to people who use it to purchase durable goods. Instead of being surprised that you lost money you will be surprised that you gained more money than expected. >This system is flawed to its core. No form of money has survived it. Thankfully, Bitcoin exists now and is the most sound form of hard money the world has ever seen. This is the system I participate in. And here we replace the flawed system with a system that has the same flaw except this time the decline happened before the system that it replaced declined... Bitcoin as a medium of exchange has already failed, meanwhile the USD and EUR are still chugging along fulfilling their original purpose albeit with less efficiency. Austrian economists will talk about positive time preference being ingrained into human nature which justifies positive interest but honestly, that's just not the kind of human I am. I have a negative time preference. It really feels like they are trying to force their own world view onto other people to justify questionable practices for the sake of living up to stereotypes. It's almost like an emperor justifying his legitimacy. Hard money is foolish and extremely short sighted. Money is effectively a promise that someone else will work for you. It is the ultimate durable good in a non durable world. People escape the real world and flee into a fictional balance sheet in the name of economic safety. When Bitcoin goes up in value, who contributed to that success? Of course future participants. Positive time preference means your greatest achievements will always be in the past. Short term thinking no longer becomes detrimental because it is the optimal strategy. As Bitcoin earns positive interest (lets say it is going 20% up in value every year) people will destroy real wealth as early as possible so that they can buy Bitcoin and then earn the 20% interest. The question is, if you are tearing apart real wealth, where are those price increases coming from? Burning down the rain forest and farming for 3 years becomes optimal and a fruit orchard bearing fruit for decades becomes obviously suboptimal. If it takes 10 years to the first harvest the productivity of your orchard has to be 6 times higher than the rain forest strategy to purchase the same quantity of Bitcoin. Each subsequent harvest becomes less valuable as Bitcoin rises in value. Of course this is a very contrived example. What's happening today is that students throw their student loans into speculative assets like Bitcoin in the hope that they don't have to finish college and get a job. What I mean by negative time preference is that I would prefer to be the fool that runs the orchard than be the genius that destroys the rain forest. I would finish my degree, knowing that I would have to work. The reason I have this mindset is that I do not believe that a balance sheet creates value beyond what exists in the real world. The balance sheet is only useful in so far that it helps create value in the real world. Hard money plays into the desire to not have to create real value. It plays into the idea of creating wealth from nothing. Bitcoin is basically monetary alchemy.
• throwawayboise 5y ago
  I always price-compare on $/oz or whatever other unit makes sense. Often this is even included on the shelf tag, but it's easily calculated if not. There's often quite a difference depending on which container size you buy, and it's not always the case that the largest container is the best value. But would I notice that last week I was getting a 20oz package and this week it is a 19oz package? Not sure. I do remember this happening with candy bars as a kid. The price would be the same, but the bars would get smaller and smaller. Then suddenly the price would go up, the bar would be bigger, and the cycle would repeat.
  • jjeaff 5y ago
    Have you noticed how the grocery store almost always used different units for comparable products? For example, the tag might be $/oz for Kellogg's but $/lb for General Mills. And that is sometimes with tiny products that have no business being in dollars per pound. I think they are purposely trying to make it more difficult to compare.
    • throwawayboise 5y ago
      Hm, no not I have not seen that, at least not that I can remember. Fortunately since I carry a computer in my pocket I can easily calculate it as needed.
    • ccfgrnc2021 5y ago
      I see this most commonly with fruit: Blueberries, $j/lb Organic Blueberries, $k/pint It seems very intentional to me.
    • SCHiM 5y ago
      Same with the energy label of food. In the metric system: Portion sizes of 65 gram in a 90 gram container. Then the label shows for 10 gram, portion size, and 100 grams. But not the actual weight of the container! I mean, what 'portion' consists of 65/90th of a container? They know full well that the actual portion people consume $PRODUCT in is what is in the box.
• nobodyandproud 5y ago
  I wonder if CPI adjusts for this. I’m betting not.
  • nobodyandproud 5y ago
    Funny how this is downvoted, but there is no rhyme reason provided.
    • c22 5y ago
      It's downvoted because it's low effort and adds nothing to the conversation. Other comments throughout the thread that mention CPI are more informative or thought provoking.
      • nobodyandproud 5y ago
        It was actually a question. I googled for a few minutes, couldn’t find anything, and threw it out there.
• mcguire 5y ago
  I hesitate to say this, but I thought there was something different about the Charmin that I'd purchased recently.
• euroderf 5y ago
  It's the Seventies all over again. Shrinkflation was rampant.
• zejn 5y ago
  Well, you either have to take care to check each package size or you could, you know, maybe make sure the food chains label the cost of product per standard unit of weight. But I guess this would be too much - air quotes - re-gyu-lay-tion for the US.