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

theguardian.com

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

#311

Post by feoren »

vineyardmike wrote: post #304
vasco wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Temporarily and in a localized way, yes. For example, if there's a natural disaster, and the people in power aren't dumb, they'll let prices float instead of putting caps in place, and everyone will be incentivised to rent big trucks full of water bottles and sell it for 20-50x the normal price. For the affected people it makes sense because now they can drink water, and if the prices were controlled nobody would mak…

Yikes. If the people in power are really smart though they’ll protect their constituents against greedy opportunists and fund the water transportation at cost. Maybe even paid for by taxpayers.

> If the people in power are really smart though they’ll protect their constituents

They have no incentive to do so. If they were actual human beings with functioning consciences maybe, but we often see people use the word "smart" to mean "ruthless asshole without a functioning moral compass". Those people assume everyone else would torture their own grandmother for an extra dollar just like they would, and so everyone who's not abusing the system to its fullest extent is just dumber than them. So in fact the people who are likely to be in power, who have absolutely no incentive to protect their constituents, will likely be in on the con as much as they can, and will actually call themselves "smart" for doing so.

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

#312

Post by mortenjorck »

Ylpertnodi wrote: post #71
mortenjorck wrote: post #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, tho…

Why keep it a secret? Name and shame.

It's Arm & Hammer, though I presume the branding is a more or less interchangeable packaging detail from the other detergent brands produced by CPG giant Church & Dwight.

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

#313

Post by milesvp »

kortilla wrote: post #260
milesvp wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without a doubt monetary policy has fueled inflation, but do not ignore the policies of allowing corporate mergers for the last 40 years. Lack of competition reduces price elasticity, and the end game of every monopoly is to raise prices. We are living in a world of global monopsonies, and my expectation is to contine to pay this monopoly tax for years. Worse, is it’s never been easier to collude. It used to be you h…

There are 20 different burger restaurants within 10 miles of me. Some are chains, some are local. Some use major beef suppliers, some use local organic ones. All of their prices have gone way up. There is no collusion here and this has jack shit to do with mergers. If those were the causes, inflation would have been a crisis 10 years ago.

How many of these burger joints own the building they operate in?

This is a very shallow look at economic forces. And ignores some of the bigger squeezes happening. The number of landlords continues to decline as real estate is consolidated in fewer hands. And worse, the number of landlords that abdicate their roles to real estate management companies grows every year, and the percentage of properties in an area run by a given management company continues to grow as well. This creates a level of “collusion” that didn’t really exist 30 years ago.

Our current market abhors competition, and regulators and courts have increasingly sided with the bigger business.

Inflation was a huge problem 10 years ago. It’s why I stopped renting.

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

#314

Post by lobocinza »

true_religion wrote: post #170
vasco wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Temporarily and in a localized way, yes. For example, if there's a natural disaster, and the people in power aren't dumb, they'll let prices float instead of putting caps in place, and everyone will be incentivised to rent big trucks full of water bottles and sell it for 20-50x the normal price. For the affected people it makes sense because now they can drink water, and if the prices were controlled nobody would mak…

I guess all people in power must be dumb because every county has laws against grifting necessary essentials in a natural disaster. It’s possible your point does apply to normal price shifts when supply for something like electronics becomes constrained but right now your example detracts from understanding that.

> I guess all people in power must be dumb

Some are smart psycopaths. The issue isn't dumb in power but dumb people voting. People get outraged by price gouging so populists create laws against it. Even though those laws don't make economic sense they make political sense.

Most of the time IMO state agents will just ignore price gouging because they know it is a necessary evil but if the need arises they can always intervene in prices, say they are doing something and save face. But this destroys the economy if done often. It's not black and white.

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

#315

Post by charles_f »

marcosdumay wrote: post #230
charles_f wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, I won't applaud Putin if he switches to electric tanks. (not that Carrefour is Putin, but you get the point - a marginal fix from someone who is a nontrivial cause of a problem is not a triumph) This is a good idea, shame drives change, and it's good that customers get better information. But also, the customer rarely benefits from large monopolies leveraging their power. Somehow they're always the losing by…

That's hardly abuse of economical power. Wake me up if they decide to remove some label due to a negotiation. Otherwise, that's the slippery slope fallacy, that is false on practice about as often as it's true.

It is not the slippery slope fallacy, it's the proposition that everything that can be used for nefarious purposes eventually will. Someone who repeatedly abuses their economical power doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt, is my point.

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

#316

Post by Brybry »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #299
Brybry wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think implying people aren't able to adequately prepare for hurricanes in Louisiana is begging the question. I've lived here for almost 40 years, through a lot of hurricanes, and that is not my experience. Sure, some shelves might be bare the day before the storm but that doesn't mean people aren't prepared, that they aren't able to get the things they need, or that the current method does not work. And when the po…

> some shelves might be bare the day before the storm but that doesn't mean people aren't prepared I remember a study on New York following Hurricane Sandy. Fuel was out. Drugs were supplied. Because nobody was incentivised to bring in extra fuel before the hurricane hit; there was no margin to incentivise it. But there was an incentive to bring in drugs, because dealers could make a killing selling at a premium. Pri…

Gas stations can't pump if they don't have power. That's generally why there's a lack of fuel.

Sometimes they have backup power or power companies prioritize them. In the south, local media will help notify which gas stations are operable. More fuel won't solve that problem.

For Sandy they had more issues than just pumps without power. 40% of their supply was reduced before the storm even hit from shutting down refineries. And then the refineries suffered damage. Storage tanks were damaged. Pipelines were inoperative. They couldn't fill delivery trucks. [1][2]

For a typical hurricane, why would there even need to be extra fuel over normal supply? In a hurricane people are driving less. They're staying home. The only extra fuel will be from generators and hoarders.

Price increases would probably decrease hoarders but it wouldn't turn refineries back on and magically make more gas.

[1] https://www.preventionweb.net/english/hyogo/gar/2015/en/bgdo... [pdf][page 6]

[2] https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/sandy-storm-anniversar...

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

#317

Post by enoch_r »

vineyardmike wrote: post #302
enoch_r wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument is completely incoherent. You can't study the cause of inflation by looking at the distributional effects of inflation. 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 therefor…

> 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. No it’s literally greed. You can choose to not raise the price of your used car when you sell it. “Market price” is a hallucination that you can ignore. You’re not forced to go along with it. As you said, sellers of used cars didn’t have their cost…

> “Market price” is a hallucination that you can ignore. You’re not forced to go along with it.

It's a powerful signal containing important information! You don't have to go along with it, but it may be beneficial to others if you do.

As an example, we bought a new car in 2019. We were planning to sell our old car but every time we were about to sell it, it came in handy - family came to town and we needed two cars, or it was nice to be able to go two places at once.

In 2020, prices shot up. Suddenly, it was worth it to sell the car.

Someone who valued it more than us got to use the vehicle. Was that greed?

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

#318

Post by charles_f »

gniv wrote: post #165
charles_f wrote: post #8

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.

I don't know anything about them as a corporate citizen, but out of the (many) supermarket chains here in France I like them the best. They are not the cheapest, but the quality/price ratio is usually correct and the store branded items are very good.

As a buyer, they have a reputation to be driving producers to the ground. Their buying power is so large that they can pretty much dictate the costs, which drives all sorts of issues - brankrupting the smaller ones, lowering the quality across the board, forcing them to take shortcuts, cheating, shrinkflating, etc.

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

#319

Post by InitialLastName »

hedora wrote: post #122
tivert wrote: 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. 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…

Most stores in the US do this, and have for decades. It is definitely intentional. Presumably the people that write the integrations shop in grocery stores, and have noticed the issue.

You would think so; on the other hand, I just met someone who works for the search team of a major search engine but hadn't noticed that their results listings had turned to garbage over the last few years.

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

#320

Post by true_religion »

lobocinza wrote: post #314
true_religion wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess all people in power must be dumb because every county has laws against grifting necessary essentials in a natural disaster. It’s possible your point does apply to normal price shifts when supply for something like electronics becomes constrained but right now your example detracts from understanding that.

> I guess all people in power must be dumb Some are smart psycopaths. The issue isn't dumb in power but dumb people voting. People get outraged by price gouging so populists create laws against it. Even though those laws don't make economic sense they make political sense. Most of the time IMO state agents will just ignore price gouging because they know it is a necessary evil but if the need arises they can always i…

I think it makes more economic sense for the government to directly subsidize necessities by shipping them in and controlling the price or giving them away for free. This is what FEMA does in the US.

What does not make sense is a world where people have to buy disaster issuance just to make sure they can afford water when a hurricane strikes.

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