Saturday 23 September 2023

Exposing Shrinkflation

I was always one of those who would join in the 'i'm sure these are smaller than i remember' regarding Wagon Wheels or Mars Bars and it was always explained that your hands were smaller as a kid so in your adult hands it would look smaller and that kind of made sense until you stop and think about it and remember that it is big Capitalist companies producing these things and obviously they would try and charge the same while discretely reducing the product and deny doing it so a massive thumbs up to French Supermarket Carrefour who are not only pointing out the companies doing it but putting huge yellow  
arrows to draw attention to it.
Carrefour has began putting labels on its shelves warning shoppers of 'shrinkflation' and has slapped price warnings on products from Lindt chocolates to Lipton iced tea to pressure the likes of NestlĂ©, PepsiCo and Unilever who complained that they had to do it due to an increase in the raw material which Carrefour pointed out is not a thing as the raw costs are now back to where they were.  
A bottle of sugar-free peach-flavoured Lipton iced tea shrank to 1.25 litres from 1.5 litres and Nestlé infant formula went from 900 grams to 830 grams while Viennetta ice-cream cake shrank to 320 grams from 350 grams and all now wear a label which reads: 'This product has seen its volume or weight fall
and the effective price from the supplier rise'.
Great you may think until a consumer Group pointed out that shrinkflation is also a thing with Carrefour's own brands so a plague on both your greedy money grabbing houses.

3 comments:

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...


what about the increased costs of transporting the raw materials (which have not dropped)? i doubt the french get their cocoa locally...

the cost of transporting the final product (which has not dropped), which is probably not made in France?

and the cost of labor (which in the US has increased - maybe not in France) which has not dropped?

was it a complete story, or just a story? probably the later since a journalist is involved...

Falling on a bruise said...

It's a story about companies trying to get away with selling less for the same price and being exposed by a Supermarket who it was then discovered, has been doing the same thing.

Liber - Latin for "The Free One" said...

it was founded on the idea that the company's did not have cost increases... so they were providing less for the same price, thus making "excess" profit...