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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

#421

Post by satvikpendem »

randcraw wrote: post #412
satvikpendem wrote: post #394

If you as a shopper can track the unit price of what you want to buy, does shrinkflation really matter? For example, if I want to buy a liter of soda, I'll buy a liter's worth regardless of whether the packaging is now smaller.

Try buying a half gallon of ice cream or a proper sized roll of toilet paper. Corporate greed, especially that is intended to cheat the consumer invisibly, always deserves to be called out.

Why wouldn't I be able to buy a half gallon? I'd just buy multiple pints until I get to my desired amount.

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

#422

Post by satvikpendem »

derefr wrote: post #418
Rebelgecko wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually shrinkflation is more subtle, eg the same size bottle has a spacer on the bottom so it's the same size as the 1l bottle but only holds 900ml. No way to buy 1l at that point, and most people don't memorize the unit prices

I don't think that's how liquids are legally able to be marketed, at least in any country I'm aware of. A volume measurement on a bottle/can/etc of liquid — whether a drink, a medicine, windshield-wiper fluid, etc — should always be the volume of liquid you get by pouring the container's contents out into a measuring vessel. No real possibility of / benefit to using slack-fill. If they change the shape of a liquid co…

Manufacturers can label it as 900 milliliters so they're not lying, but the bottle looks like it's a liter bottle so the customer doesn't really check the listed amount. They should check though, is my point.

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

#423

Post by wg0 »

sneak wrote: post #393

These stickers would make me angry at the market itself. If they are bad products, why are you trying to sell them to me? Carry something from a brand that doesn't employ dark patterns to deceive me. It's literally the job of the market to editorialize and choose the best options for the limited shelf space.

They are letting me choose with information on top. Fair proposition I suppose.

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

#424

Post by jeffbee »

Retric wrote: post #388
mensetmanusman wrote: post #387

Shrinkflation in regards to sugar drinks is oddly in the best interests of the state due to the incredible obesity crisis.

Only if smaller sizes actually reduced people’s weight which seems unlikely.

Are you suggesting that people will simply buy more units, at a higher total price? That would be a novel result in economic history.

Local taxes on soda in American cities have demonstrably lowered sales of those drinks, in those jurisdictions. Buyers are sensitive to price. In fact, demand for sugary drinks is highly elastic. A tax of just 1¢/oz in Oakland caused a 27% decline in sales, without countervailing increases of sales in neighboring markets without the tax.

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...

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

#425

Post by [deleted] »

gnicholas wrote: post #407
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #390

My pet peeve is that price per round measurement unit (eg kilogram) is in tiny writing compared to product cost, even though they are arguably equally important. Given that the former is mandated, they should also mandate that they appear in equal size fonts on price labels.

Yeah Safeway typically shows price per unit, but Trader Joe’s (which is often thought of as a ‘friendly’ grocery) never does. I wish they did!

[deleted]

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

#426

Post by satvikpendem »

blibble wrote: post #410
Longhanks wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the client being to lazy to make uninformed decisions him- or herself is the mess here. Most countries require a price per liter/per kilo anyway, so you always can compare. And if you can’t, more regulation won’t make that happen, either, see the failed "Nutri Score".

no-one commits the price for litre/kg to memory

If you shop often enough, you do start to remember it. I buy a lot of groceries every week and would absolutely notice if things got smaller or the unit price got larger.

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

#427

Post by jxramos »

satvikpendem wrote: post #422
derefr wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's how liquids are legally able to be marketed, at least in any country I'm aware of. A volume measurement on a bottle/can/etc of liquid — whether a drink, a medicine, windshield-wiper fluid, etc — should always be the volume of liquid you get by pouring the container's contents out into a measuring vessel. No real possibility of / benefit to using slack-fill. If they change the shape of a liquid co…

Manufacturers can label it as 900 milliliters so they're not lying, but the bottle looks like it's a liter bottle so the customer doesn't really check the listed amount. They should check though, is my point.

I wish changes like this would also trigger a change in the barcode, that fundamentally by law a new unit size of the same product would be given a new number and that number would be on the receipt. If the number was tokenized like a VIN with sub strings representing volume that could be another way to catch this where the information is tied to data text rather than the physical product whose visuals can deceive when in a rushed shopping event.

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

#428

Post by tacker2000 »

gnicholas wrote: post #407
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #390

My pet peeve is that price per round measurement unit (eg kilogram) is in tiny writing compared to product cost, even though they are arguably equally important. Given that the former is mandated, they should also mandate that they appear in equal size fonts on price labels.

Yeah Safeway typically shows price per unit, but Trader Joe’s (which is often thought of as a ‘friendly’ grocery) never does. I wish they did!

In the EU its mandatory everywhere.

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

#429

Post by Terretta »

gnicholas wrote: post #407
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #390

My pet peeve is that price per round measurement unit (eg kilogram) is in tiny writing compared to product cost, even though they are arguably equally important. Given that the former is mandated, they should also mandate that they appear in equal size fonts on price labels.

Yeah Safeway typically shows price per unit, but Trader Joe’s (which is often thought of as a ‘friendly’ grocery) never does. I wish they did!

Surely coincidence rather than collusion (ahem*), manufacturers sharing the same competitive shelf space mysteriously all prefer different units.

* see tacit collusion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_collusion

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

#430

Post by jxramos »

djbusby wrote: post #416
satvikpendem wrote: post #394

If you as a shopper can track the unit price of what you want to buy, does shrinkflation really matter? For example, if I want to buy a liter of soda, I'll buy a liter's worth regardless of whether the packaging is now smaller.

Yes it matters. Box of crackers. Was 450g weight. Now same size box has 400g. Price is same. People buy by the package, not the quantity in the package.

Exactly, there’s a muscle memory and a tangible quantity a package often implies. When the packaging mismatches the quantity it is misleading essentially and wasteful of resources at that point. Think about the shipping angle where packaging is wasted at that point—-basically a smaller package could be used and still allow the transport of the product.
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