241–250 of 535 posts
Yeah but what’s the alternative? Things are expensive, you’ve got to eat. I have to purchase things even if it’s affected by shrinkflation.
There are lots of alternatives to PepsiCo, Unilever, and Nestle.
To the other ones, well, just try replacing them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Record profits in a period of inflation is not surprising. If the value of the Australian dollar halves, then a company doubling it's raw profit figures is really just staying maintaining the same profits in real value.
If the value of the Australian dollar halves, and a company manages to double its raw profit figures... doesn't that still sound like price gouging? Why would their "maintaining the same profits in real value" be acceptable when no-one else in the end to end chain (producers, customers, etc) managed to in the situation.
The worse combo is shrinkflation with significantly increased price. I used to buy Arm and Hammer detergent (250 FL OZ) from Costco for ~$11 about a year ago. Last week, I went to Costco and saw that they have reduced the size of the container (in a very subtle way so it is hard to notice) with 200 FL OZ and charges $14.89. That is like double rip-off. My salary did not increase 35% between this and last year. For Ch…
I bought a jar of some new Nutella type spread and while the lid is round, the jar footprint is lozenge shaped. From the front it looks like a normal jar, from the side I actually started laughing at this skinny little thing with a giant overhanging lid.
I really love it when stores put the per unit price on their labels (at least they do in California), i.e. $2 per ounce. It would be neat if they can also add a historical graph of those prices to the label.
https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/consumer-protecti...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do not buy into that narrative. ... Carrefour's profits in 2022 were about the same as in 2019. Isn't this exactly why we should buy into this narrative? The manufacturers increased their margins, so Carrefour sells more expensive, but in the end gets the same total profit.
The parent is saying that these "increase in margins" are companies trying to get ahead of inflation. The media narrative has been to blame the corporations, despite the real issue being the economy. There are elections to worry about, so we can't have that. Smart businesses don't wait until they start losing money to make adjustments. They plan ahead. These "margin increases" are literally increases due to inflation…
This might be a really, really stupid question, but aren't corporate decisions sort of the economy?
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…
> Corporate profits are high. Inflation increases profits, too (but not in real dollars). > This is one of the reasons why. The reason why is inflation.
The price used to be $8 because they were in a tight battle with other burger joints, and that was as low as they could get it. Now they have to fight their suppliers, but not so much with their competition.
This is one of the reasons why high inflation creates unstable inflation, and why central banks like to keep inflation low.
The worse combo is shrinkflation with significantly increased price. I used to buy Arm and Hammer detergent (250 FL OZ) from Costco for ~$11 about a year ago. Last week, I went to Costco and saw that they have reduced the size of the container (in a very subtle way so it is hard to notice) with 200 FL OZ and charges $14.89. That is like double rip-off. My salary did not increase 35% between this and last year. For Ch…
> For Church & Dwight (Arm and Hammer brand manufacturer) to not only increase the price by at least 35% with shrinkflation, I wonder where the extra profit are going toward. That assumes there's extra profits. They also have to pay for materials, labor, etc. which have also gone up recently. Perhaps they're making the same profit (amount or percent) they were 4 years ago at that size/price?
BUT, we don't really know how these gross margins are actually calculated (meaning, the reporting is all done by these corporations with very complicated accounting methodologies). All things considered though, 41.9% gross profit margin for 2022 is still pretty good. With the supply chain easing, I am very curious to see how that profit margin looks like in 2023.
My totally unsubstantiated guess is like this: labor probably got a 10% bump since COVID; raw materials and oil/gas (for transportation) probably also had like 10-20%% bump in total. Then the remaining 5% (from 35% increase in just the price, NOT including the profit from shrinking) is probably going toward the extra coffers of the corporations.
Lay's bags (a PepsiCo brand) are always half-empty doubling plastic waste. There should be laws to tax emptyness in packaging. Half-empty = 50% tax.
https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/the-surprising-reason-wh...
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...
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...
For example, in 2020 there was a huge increase in demand for used cars, and the price of used cars increased by ~40% within a few months. But people who sold used cars did not have their costs increase - they were, after all, selling an already completed product. The IMF would therefore estimate that between 2019 and 2020, ~100% of inflation in used car prices was due to margin increases rather than inflation itself.
This is obviously silly - the increase in prices was because there were too many buyers and too few cars, not because the owners of used cars suddenly because significantly more greedy overnight. It's the same with corporate profits. Inflation has distributional effects which are interesting to study, but we shouldn't confuse ourselves by claiming that the effects are actually the causes.