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Ask HN: How should we design anti-shrinkflation laws?

• daveoc64 4y ago
  I don't think there is a problem to solve. Shrinkflation is annoying - I'm sure many would prefer to pay more for the same product, but ultimately if you can afford it, you can just buy multiple packs to get the quantity you need.
• PaulHoule 4y ago
  I am on the road right now, I had a Burrito last night that was good and priced fairly, I ate 90% of it. I got indigestion. I wish I'd gotten 70% as big a burrito and paid 70% as much. That's not fair to the restaurant though because their overheard includes order taking, payment, the space my wife and I took up, cleaning up after us, the free chips and salsa, etc. So maybe the restaurant wishes I got the 70% burrito but I paid 85% of the cost. There was a great soul food restaurant in my home town which sold biologically appropriate portions for prices not much less than you usually pay for oversized entrees. I think one reason they didn't last was that people perceived it as a poor value.
  • adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    And on the flip side, it annoys me that in any normal supermarket, you can only buy things in relatively small packs for a fairly hefty premium over what larger packs would be. And if they do large packs, they're usually the "value" range. I guess because the sticker shock on large packs of more expensive ranges would put people off. Sure you can go to Costco if you pay the membership, there is one nearby and don't mind having much less choice, but it's still aggravating. Large packs also drive food waste, so it would be nice if the small pack premiums weren't so punitive rather then just having bigger packs anyway.
• Bostonian 4y ago
  As long as a company does not lie about product sizes on the packaging, it should be free to sell products in any quantity. Consumers that feel tricked will buy from another company.
• schmookeeg 4y ago
  This seems like a really odd thing to standardize OR legislate to me. Maybe require cost per unit to be displayed under the price itself and let the "busy crowd" do the math if they care enough?
  • adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    Cost per unit or weight is already a requirement in Europe. Though supermarkets seem to always engineer a way to have the "main" product be sold by weight and the "main alternative" to be by unit (e.g. prepacked), so you can't directly compare.
  • gruez 4y ago
    I don't see how that helps protect against shrinkflation though? You'd still need to remember what the historical unit price is, which I doubt people would bother remembering.
    • mrep 4y ago
      And that differs from normal inflation with prices going up how?
      • pixl97 4y ago
        Because people have been conditioned their entire life to pay attention to total price. Also there are some price barriers that make people put products down. For example if the price of a bag of chips goes over 4.99 then sales drop 65%. We'll, you just keep making the amount in the bag smaller to avoid that barrier.
  • mwint 4y ago
    Cost per unit is displayed on price labels in the US, at every store I can remember being to. Smaller text than the price, which makes sense. Sometimes the units are screwed up, and it shows “$3.49, $3.49/ea” for something that should be in ounces, but that’s rare and is clearly a data problem.
• sokoloff 4y ago
  My feeling is that, so long as the weights and prices are transparently displayed, this should be a producer/consumer choice. Maybe it matters to me that I want to be able to buy $5 worth of dishwasher detergent, whether that's enough for 12 loads of dishes or later is only enough for 9 loads, as long as that's transparently stated, I don't see the issue. In some cases (like chips and sugared drinks), shrinkflation might be a net benefit to consumers overall.
  • feet 4y ago
    Ah yes, let's shift the obligation of being aware onto the people who are traditionally lacking in education. Cool, let the exploitation continue
    • water554 4y ago
      Ah yes, let’s think we know better than everybody else.
      • __blockcipher__ 4y ago
        It's also a tempting but dangerous idea to think that it's just a problem of "education". Not nearly as many issues are solvable by "education" as people think, IMO.
        • sieabahlpark 4y ago
      • feet 4y ago
        Actively attempting to trick people who aren't aware of something is totally different than assuming we know something better than someone else. Are you serious right now?
    • mrep 4y ago
      Inflation is inflation whether that is keeping the price the same and reducing the amount or increasing the price and keeping the same amount. Consumers are going to have to deal with one anyways so why fixate on the former?
• adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  I don't think of an especially workable way, but an inflation-linked multi-year price-per-weight history for the product on the price label? I'm sure it would be instantly worked around because shrinkflators are already busily playing sneaky tricks. Probably they'd just slap "great new taste" on it every year and pretend it's a new product. Package sizes were regulated in the EU starting in the 70s, presumably for this reason, but they've been deregulated in the last decade (other than alcohol).
  • pixl97 4y ago
    >Probably they'd just slap "great new taste" on it every year and pretend it's a new product. Walmart pretty much requires this anyway. Look around on how they caused the price of pickles down to almost nothing and put companies in bankruptcy, this had to be at least 20 years ago now so Google kinda sucks at finding information on it.
• gruez 4y ago
  >Should we have sets of fixed package weights and volumes for food and beverages? Requiring prominent notices of size changes would fix this problem without the government to dictate what size formats are allowed.
  • toomuchtodo 4y ago
    US specific: Require filing a notice with the FTC when a product change occurs. FTC can publish notices with a web app and provide in a machine readable format. Unless you're an exceptionally small business frequently changing product sizes per UPC/SKU, the burden should be reasonable. Third parties can consume the data and distribute to their audiences, create mailing lists or something similar as well.
• mindslight 4y ago
  Mandate that the unit price needs to be front and center (like it already is for many things), and mandate what that unit must be for a given type of product. Many times I've seen even the same exact product in different sizes, but one unit priced in $/oz, one in $/lbs, and one in $/qty100, effectively making existing unit price labeling useless. If the units were fixed, people would be able to build an intuition for how much the unit price for a given product should be.
• randombits0 4y ago
  Please, stop making silly laws and let the market work.
  • scotty79 4y ago
    Markets work to decive their customers the best way they can.
    • randombits0 4y ago
      Not competitive markets. Deceptive players run out of customers quickly.
• toast0 4y ago
  At most, mandate a new product id when the product materially changes. It's not great when the new size has the same bar code as the old one. Or when a computer product is updated with a different chipset and has the same model number. Or when a CD is remastered, but has the same label and liner. If hot dog companies sell 10 hot dogs and bun companies sell 8 buns, and Coke sells 10 packs, but Pepsi sells 12 packs, I don't think that's nice for consumers, but I don't think government intervention is the right way to fix it.
  • acadapter 4y ago
    The problem is that someone can make a very similar design, and pass the legal loophole. And it's not the bar code that does the psychological effect on the customer. It's the combination of general appearance, and purchasing habits.
  • isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
    There are GS1 GTIN "rules" about that (e.g. https://www.gs1.org/1/gtinrules/en/decision-support/decision/3 https://www.gs1.org/1/gtinrules/en/decision-support/decision...), but they are guidelines, and relatively lax ones at that (e.g. gross weight changes of up to 20% are allowed). Anybody in retail more or less knows that manufacturers, and even worse - intermediate sellers - don't bother informing about material changes (e.g. languages on packaging being removed to put some marketing bullshit, opening you to legal consequences). Never mention people reusing GTINs for totally unrelated articles.
• AngusH 4y ago
  We could look at historical laws that did exactly this. Set standard sizes and only allow sales in those size on penalty of prosecution. For an example from the uk, until a few years ago bread could only be sold in 400g or multiples thereof. You couldn't sell most kinds of bread except in standard sizes, so shrinkflation couldn't occur. There were some exceptions obviously and you could have bigger multiples (like the mythical 1600g loaf) https://www.fob.uk.com/about-the-bread-industry/how-bread-is-made/legislation/ https://www.fob.uk.com/about-the-bread-industry/how-bread-is... The standard approaches on how do this date back centuries. Milk gets sold in standard pints (err... 568ml), beer in pints, flour in 1kg bags, etc. I actually think these restrictions are a good thing, with permitted exceptions possible for some specific things
• mejutoco 4y ago
  Here is an idea: Incentivize the supermarkets to display price/100g or similar, like they do in the grocery section sometimes.
• Waterluvian 4y ago
  In Canada (or maybe just Ontario?) we have price per unit weight. Like “$0.38 per 100 grams” It’s a required part of a price label in grocery stores. I suspect this exists elsewhere too. It works fine enough. I don’t see a need for anything further. It’s really simple and anyone who needs simpler probably won’t benefit from simpler anyways.
  • pixl97 4y ago
    The problem here is I don't tend to remember the unit price of things, and I think this holds true for most people. We remember chips are $2, not .25 an once.
• erichocean 4y ago
  It'd be fun to have a sparkline printed next to both the actual price, and the price-per-ounce (or whatever). Set it at like a year. Would make it really easy to see the price changes without having to memorize the price or price-per-ounce of a thousand different items.
• endisneigh 4y ago
  There shouldn’t be such a law. If anything there should be a law showing the price per gram for all products in all categories in all settings.
  • scotty79 4y ago
    And in 20% larger font than the price.