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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

#521

Post by RugnirViking »

Gigachad wrote: post #349
ta1243 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Record profits as a percentage of revenue. The problem in Austrialia is a lack of competition, hence Woolworths can get a 5.9% profit compared with say Tesco in the UK with 3.8% profit (the UK having far more competition) Not only that but while demand is decreasing, profits are increasing. That's a ridiculous system and shows a broken market.

Plenty of competitors have prepared to enter Australia, and then left after finding there is no money to be made. Too few people spread too far apart.

it sounds a lot like there is plenty of money to be made from the figures parent is stating. Maybe it ought to be prased more like "unique logistical challenges" because clearly some few companies have made it work very well

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

#522

Post by RugnirViking »

yladiz wrote: post #358
astrange wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it doesn't have a minimum wage. There's nothing to hide here. Just look at the median wage in both places. Or in this case, the lowest 10% wage. I prefer Australia's wage board system, but I think nobody knows how it works because they're Australian so they've given stupid names to everything. Try and guess what "award" and "casual loading" mean.

It doesn’t have a de jure minimum wage, but it does have a de facto one, and just saying it doesn’t hides the subtlety of that.

I disagree. I live here and regularly see people exploited. It's not uncommon for students from romania/moldavia/bulgaria being paid a literal token fee per hour just so they can register enough hours to claim SU. Job listings advertising this fact brazenly, because its not even illegal... Similarly a whole bunch of workers here in nordjylland's factory farms get paid ridiculously low salaries per hour. We're talking 70kr per hour or less.

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

#523

Post by inductive_magic »

jjgreen wrote: post #193
inductive_magic wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is "Englishism" slang? The term I know is "anglicism"

Slangy (like liker ), I prefer it since it's obvious what it means and it does not get confused with the Anglican Church.

It means something different than you're insinuating: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/english...

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

#524

Post by eru »

usrusr wrote: post #225
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish there was legislation in place that sets legal standard sizes; for one, it would allow for more uniform packaging, allowing reuse between brands and reducing trash. It would be more predictable box / pallet sizes, reducing transport costs. And it would give consumers more security, even with the mandatory price per liter / kilo notices which are often hard to read. One example of shrinkflation / cost fuckery h…

Germany used to have that legislation, removed in 2009. Legal packaging sizes were e.g. 100g, 250g, 500g, 750g, 1000g. Removed because it was, unsurprisingly, not the lowest common denominator EU wide. It's almost universally considered a tragic loss, I guess the only exception are those whose job description includes getting creative with packaging size.

They still have legislation that you have to prominently display the 'Euro per 100g' price? I consider that good enough, and packaging size should be left to the customer.

(The old rule had lots of exceptions and loophole anyway. I remember that fresh yeast almost always came in little cubes of something like 42g, because that's a convenient amount for baking. And no one had any problems with that.

Do you really want bureaucrats or politicians to decide on arguments about what odd sizes are convenient enough to warrant granting such exceptions?)

However, I do remember shopping in Britain, where Tesco would give you the mandated unit price for one kind of apple per piece and the next box over with a different variety of apple would give you the unit price per kg. British supermarkets were a bit customer hostile like that. (I noticed them get a lot better when Aldi and Lidl really took hold in the UK. Especially those confusing '5-for-3' deals etc got much rarer.)

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

#525

Post by eru »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #291
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish there was legislation in place that sets legal standard sizes; for one, it would allow for more uniform packaging, allowing reuse between brands and reducing trash. It would be more predictable box / pallet sizes, reducing transport costs. And it would give consumers more security, even with the mandatory price per liter / kilo notices which are often hard to read. One example of shrinkflation / cost fuckery h…

Enforcing legal standard weights/sizes for everything that businesses cannot deviate from would be ridiculous... and that wouldn't reduce inflation, either. List the price per litre or per kg, for instance, for every item in addition to the item's price and people can then compare between different brands on the shelf. This is already done in many cases though I do not know if there is a legal obligation. People are…

> This is already done in many cases though I do not know if there is a legal obligation.

Many countries have such legal obligations. Details obviously depend on jurisdiction.

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

#526

Post by eru »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #236
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish there was legislation in place that sets legal standard sizes; for one, it would allow for more uniform packaging, allowing reuse between brands and reducing trash. It would be more predictable box / pallet sizes, reducing transport costs. And it would give consumers more security, even with the mandatory price per liter / kilo notices which are often hard to read. One example of shrinkflation / cost fuckery h…

I've been saying this for ages. There are so many second-order benefits. For example in Japan, books are virtually all a standard size, and so bookshelves are built to match. Lets you fit more books in a small home. When packages are random sizes and always varying, it's impossible for anyone in adjacent industries to develop synergies.

As a customer you can already refuse to buy books that do not come in your preferred standard size.

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

#527

Post by eru »

kergonath wrote: post #254
bombela wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In France, there is always the price per unit. And since the units are not in grain of barley nor a game of guess work (is this ounce dry or wet today?), it's obviously much easier to compare.

Isn’t this a European regulation? In any case, it is obviously a good thing for consumers and it is difficult to argue against this.

Not sure if it's EU-level regulation, but many EU countries seem to have it.

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

#528

Post by eru »

JuanPosadas wrote: post #366
somsak2 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As sibling comment said, I think this is bound to cause unintended side-effects. I think it would be simpler to require per-unit pricing alongside overall cost, and regulate that amount. Nothing more frustrating than seeing a per ml or oz cost on one item and a per-count cost on one right next to it.

At my Kroger, almost half the times I try to compare unit price bergen two products, the units are different (e.g. $/oz or $/lb or $/g). And these are always products right next to each other on the shelf.

I noticed that at Tesco in the UK as well (but that was ten years ago), they also mixed GBP/piece into the mix.

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

#529

Post by lesuorac »

WalterBright wrote: post #346
lesuorac wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Individual companies cannot cause inflation, because they cannot increase the money supply. No, you really don't know what the word inflation means in the economic sense. >> https://www.google.com/search?q=define+inflation >> ECONOMICS >> a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money. Also companies can 100% increase their prices and if a singular company such as Exxon does it then pretty m…

Where does the extra money come from, lesuorac? > companies can 100% increase their prices Only if the consumers have the money, and are willing to pay it and not their competitor. Where do they get the extra money?

I see you've moved past trying to argue what the definition of inflation is so I can only assume you've agreed me with.

So to move on to your new topic, there is a framing problem here. There does not need to be extra money during a period with inflation.

If I had $100 dollars and potatoes are $2 and a car is $50 I can get 25 potatoes and 1 car. If the costs of a car increases to $80 I can get 10 potatoes and 1 car. Inflation has occurred and I haven't done any changes to the money supply here.

And then of course, Inflation isn't a new word post-Bretton Woods; there was inflation when people used gold as currency.

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

#530

Post by hcks »

h1fra wrote: 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...

Inflation manifests itself as margin increases.

There’s too little goods being produced for too much people having money. Therefore the people selling goods can raise prices.

For some reason people assume that workers can’t be left worse off with inflation bc they assume wages have to increase to follow it. It doesn’t have to be the case. In Europe, workers are becoming poorer.

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