191–200 of 240 posts
Another source of shrinkflation is changing ingredients. Something that used to be 50% water is now 75% water as an example. Another is changing from olive oil to canola or palm or, and things like that.
I mind this much more than I mind shrinkflation
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>No we call it just that, enshittification. I'll be glad when this juvenile meme finally passes out of Hacker News' system.
It's basically 'race to the bottom' but that term is not very inspirational. It's not evoking any kind of reaction in the masses.
In a high-inflation environment your profits are constantly shrinking. The problem also affects small and independent makers of all kinds. If you are an indie maker and priced your product at $10 in 2020, you're now effectively making $8.38 USD[1]. Assuming inflation will remain elevated and you want to maintain the same margins, you need to either: 1. increase prices 2. reduce quality/quantity/features 3. reduce sup…
Most of the products on the site appear to be candy/junk that shouldn’t be consumed in large quantities anyway. There is probably substantial social good being done by making the default portions of pringles and chocolate smaller.
This is great! I wanted to add a product that I recently noticed was smaller, but I no longer use Google, so I'm unable to go through the submission process. Maybe if someone else sees this you can add Kingsford charcoal. 4-5 years ago bags came in a pack of 2x20 lb. Then 2022 they were 2x18lb. This year they are 2x16lb. Can't wait until we can just buy a 2 pack of briquettes.
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It's basically 'race to the bottom' but that term is not very inspirational. It's not evoking any kind of reaction in the masses.
Neither is "enshittification." Only HN and some tech bloggers even use it as far as I know, and mostly just to be able to imply something is "turning into shit" while pretending to use a precise term of art. But it isn't, it's a poop joke.
I don't really understand the recent focus on this. Shrinkflation has always been a thing, and it seems like it shouldn't be strongly correlated with actual inflation, since the critical equation is something like how much material should a given product contain to provide enough value to consumers, or in other words it's equally advantageous to optimize the value of your product in times of low or high inflation and…
It’s not a recent focus, it’s a continual focus. Shrinkflation is important for understanding true price increase. It’s not enough to say “toothpaste went up 20%” in price because you really want to know “toothpaste went up 35% based on weight.” It’s also frustrating because it’s just another level of bullshit to sift through when shopping. It would be nice if manufacturers and retailers didn’t do this.
They do it because otherwise people will complain incessantly about price increases and this way people only complain intermittently about shrinkflation.
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> but enshitification by slowly decreasing the quality of the ingredients is also a problem. Every time you see a package with “new and improved recipe” you can bet it only improved their margins by using cheaper ingredients, not the actual taste.
They didn't say who the recipe was improved for...
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One of the worst offenders in this regard is packages of frozen meat products such as chicken wings, chicken fingers, nuggets, etc. They used to just contain the breaded meat with the net weight printed on the box (usually 2 lb). Now they've started including frozen sauce packets as well. I've weighed some of these and found, for example, a 2 lb box of chicken wings that comes with more than half a pound of buffalo s…
Sort of related is chocolate. I feel like 'pure' chocolate is a loss leader and all of the other types with mixed in caramel bits etc are a way of selling you a bunch of cheaper stuff for the same weight and price! Better to just buy the least adulterated chocolate for the best deal.
In an ideal world, one UPC code would identify only one product with one set of ingredients and one weight. Want to make a "+20% free!" package? New UPC! Want to change the contents from 16% cacao to 14% cacao and some more sugar? Sure, new UPC. The manufacturers would have to publish the contents for each UPC in a machine readable format. Then the retailers would have to publish daily prices, again in a machine reda…
All products have multiple component suppliers, with different tolerances/varieties, where the components are judged "close enough". Suppliers come and go. And even if it's a single large supplier, they may have different farms/factories/etc so you won't even be getting homogeneous components from them.
I was just talking today to someone about how they don't like food from a certain global coffee chain anymore because their food has gotten kinda crappy. Shrinkflation generally means same price for less product (grams, fluid ounces), but enshitification by slowly decreasing the quality of the ingredients is also a problem. Do we put that under the shrinkflation umbrella or track it as a separate problem? Since they…