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

theguardian.com

101–110 of 535 posts

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

#101
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know how much this is negotiating technique. 100%. What else would it be?

Reputation. When you see a different size for the first time at big chains they sometimes are not a change to the manufacturers normal lines. (If you have much faster turn over than other places your customer's shop that could also reinforce the perception that you are complicit.)

[deleted]

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

#102
post #13

We need laws to require special labelling with the price per net pound or price per net kiloggram clearly shown, and the previous price. Something like: $2.99/Kg (since 18/09/2023) $2.79/Kg (previous price)

Lots of UK supermarkets like Tesco, Sainsburys have Price/Kg for different packages and products. It makes comparing between products much easier.

Especially that all-important "price per 100 sheets" for toilet paper!

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

#103

Chocolate bars are most notorious for this. Someone needs to do a 10 years ago comparison and there's a massive difference. These days, chocolate bars are all bite sized.

"Fun-Size".

Although, like many more famous people who've made this observation: Where's the "fun" in less chocolate?

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

#104
post #13

We need laws to require special labelling with the price per net pound or price per net kiloggram clearly shown, and the previous price. Something like: $2.99/Kg (since 18/09/2023) $2.79/Kg (previous price)

I get annoyed for similar reasons when nutritional information on a product is “per serving” and the serving size is arbitrary.

Oh, it’s only 4 grams of sugar per serving. Oh, a serving is 1 bite.

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

#105
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".

In Canada, they call it a “Party Size” or a “Family Size” box.

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

#106
post #69

For those wondering if it's truly representative, it's estimated that 50% of the inflation in Europe is due to margin increase not bc of the inflation itself. https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/06/26/europes-inf...

Supply constraints typically lead to higher prices and higher margins. The fact that the margins have gone up does not somehow imply that the higher prices are something other than inflation.

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

#107

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…

This is a cynical move because, as the article mentions right at the top, this is just to apply pressure on suppliers before contracts renegotiations. Tesco in the Uk does not sort of stunt as well and for the same reasons. > In the UK many people rely on Food banks and parents skip meals to feed their children. A small minority, not 'many'...

A small minority of the UK can still be hundreds of thousands, even millions of people. Don't underestimate volume just because the % is low.

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

#108
post #13

We need laws to require special labelling with the price per net pound or price per net kiloggram clearly shown, and the previous price. Something like: $2.99/Kg (since 18/09/2023) $2.79/Kg (previous price)

In France, at least the law requires showing the current price per kilogram. So what Carrefour is doing is highlighting that this has changed compared to the previous price.

This has been harmonized across the EU for, I think, 25 years.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

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

#109
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safeway is somewhat insidious with things like this. They'll have a relative price (per pound/oz) for one size of an item, and then for the same item, different size, they'll use a different metric (per packet/slice, etc.) to make them not (easily) directly comparable.

> Safeway is somewhat insidious with things like this. They'll have a relative price (per pound/oz) for one size of an item, and then for the same item, different size, they'll use a different metric (per packet/slice, etc.) to make them not (easily) directly comparable. Unless there is a really strong pattern, I think that might be a situation were you shouldn't assume malice when stupidity will do. I think it's qui…

Such ”incompetence, not malice” errors can be trivially solved by defaulting to the consumer receiving a discount on the item in the event of variations in how the items on the shelves are labeled. Boom, you now have an army of validation specialists going around checking the consistency of your labeling. A very low-cost solution if your errors are truly good-faith and infrequent, you are paying pennies per person-hour!

Some states offer a “scanner bounty” when items transitioned from sticker labeling to scanner pricing with only shelf tags, because vendors would often not update the shelf tags or item tags appropriately when they changed the scanner database. Find an error and receive 10x the difference up to $5.

https://www.michigan.gov/ag/consumer-protection/consumer-ale...

You will rapidly find stores becoming less incompetent overnight once they have an incentive to be. It’s not that they’re not capable of being competent, there just isn’t a legal requirement or a market incentive to be competent. A law without a penalty for (knowing or un-knowing) noncompliance is just a polite request.

They are profiting and thriving off the tendency for good-natured people to adopt the “incompetence, not malice” mindset and then accept that as a normal standard of behavior. After all, what can be done? Sho ga nai.

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

#110

I think we should place a QR on every product label, and scanning that QR takes me to data about the product such as its historical mass/volume, cost, and unit price, as well as its brand owner right on up the chain. I see you, Nestle. Of course, giving customers information to make an informed decision is Bad For Business.

Like a barcode? Effectively every product in grocery stores has a UPC on it already.

So you wouldn't need store buy-in, because the challenge here isn't the QR code, it's the place where all that data is maintained. An app could scan the barcode, or you could manually enter the UPC into a website. If you think this is worthwhile, you could build this.

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