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Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

theguardian.com

61–70 of 535 posts

Re: Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

#61
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every brand is doing this

On Reddit, someone said that even Carrefour is doing this with their own labeled products. Seems like just a negotiation tactic against their suppliers versus doing something pro-consumer.

If the consumer benefits, does the intent matter?

Re: Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

#62
I don’t know what the correct term is in English but in my country, “comparative pricing” is mandatory, so when you’re buying coffee for example there’s a secondary price listed that tells you what the cost is per kilogram or whatever other unit makes sense.

For me this already solves the problem, because what I really care about isn’t whether I get 500g or 400g of coffee, I care about the real price compared to the other options on the shelf.

Re: Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

#63
An interesting tidbit of information is that a number of products (butter, flour, milk, sugar,...) used to be sold in standardized weights and volumes (1kg, 500g, etc.).

It got repealed in the 80s under pressure from manufacturing AND commercial lobbys.

Re: Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

#64
A brand of laundry detergent I use recently decreased the size of its 36oz bottle to 28oz. The kicker, however, is the approximate number of loads listed on the bottle changed from 27… to 28. The instructions on the back now recommend filling the cap to a lower bar for “medium” loads.

I’ve been meaning to write to the manufacturer to ask if they’ve quietly changed their formulation to something more concentrated, though I have a pretty good idea of the canned response I'd receive.

Re: Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

#65
post #48

This is great, shrinkflation is one of these disgusting practices that play on the human psyche to trick people. But also carrefour (and large retailers like them) are notorious for abusing their power when buying, and are a large part of the systemic problem. I don't know how much this is negotiating technique.

Does it matter if the customer benefits?

It’s like Yelp, though.

If they’re just wielding power over manufacturers, they also have the power to give into negotiations to remove the labels if manufacturers pay enough.

Which means it’s ultimately no longer about benefiting the customers, but squeezing as much as they can from manufacturers, and we end up with only get part of the truth.

Re: Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

#67

This is such a good idea. I know that everyone in the Western World is told that they eat too much but people need to be able to buy food and eat it. And if the same packaging this week has 90% of what it had last week then then consumers are going to suffer. In the UK many people rely on Food banks and parents skip meals to feed their children. Cutting the amount of food in a package in a manner that is not even vis…

Well, you can (and should!) check the (mandatory) price/mass or price/volume, but of course there are very smart people being paid a lot to design the packaging so that it's sufficiently compelling for you to still put a higher value on the product...

Re: Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

#68

> Guigoz infant formula produced by Nestlé went from 900 grams (31.75 oz) to 830 grams, while Unilever’s Viennetta ice-cream cake shrank to 320 grams from 350 grams. I've always thought "from -> to" so I'm curious when people use "to Is it more common in the UK? Is there a name for this?

One reason for doing this is to add variety to the sentence structure rather than just repeating the same from- to construction for both items. Whether that’s a good choice in this case is a different matter.

Re: Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

#70
post #44

It’s incredible to me that MBAs are still able to pitch “what if we made the product deceptively smaller but charged the same price?”, and don’t get thrown out a window. As if that’s a novel sustainable long-term strategy in CPG.

Don't worry, in a few months they will make a package that says "Now with 20% more".

And bump up the prices 15%
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